The Identity Game
by Tee Eye Gee
Summary: Not all Boss Monsters are good. Some can be very, very twisted. A police force that protects criminals, a press that covers up stories, who would enable such nonsense? And more importantly, who would truly rule over those enablers?
1. Eradicated

The Monster King's Resolve

Chapter 01

Eradicated

* * *

It was truly breathtaking to once again finally see the sun with his very own eyes after hundreds of years. Despite it setting, and by now being no more than an orange glowing reflection of a star that wasn't really in sight any more, it shun so brightly that looking straight at it felt like it was blinding him. He stopped on his way, chasing after the varied little band that human child had brought with it, just to close his eyes, and take a deep breath. They hadn't been up here for more than a few mere minutes, and Asgore could already feel his health, his true health returning.

They all probably felt it, but didn't consciously notice, which was why they were particularly lively now, talking all the louder, demanding others wait for them more energetically. The breeze of the surface was laced with the force of human souls, and it was only here that monsters truly lived, quite in the literal sense. It was as if they existed much more strongly here. In the underground, even those who never lived outside of the underground, were a mere shadow of who they would be on the surface. Soon, it was going to manifest in that small band of friends. They would soon notice their magic growing significantly stronger under the same effort, and their bodies becoming more solid and capable of enacting stronger forces.

Asgore didn't know what manner of miracle he had to thank for this, for his people soon being rid of the desperate existence they had where they currently were. He was just thankful for it happening. The child. Frisk, his name. He couldn't shake the feeling that he had him to thank for all this. If he wanted, and Toriel allowed it, Asgore was willing to raise this child as if it was his own, regardless of what happened last time. Quite the opposite. If a situation occurred similar to what had happened all those years ago, he was now certain he would take matters into his own hands and go over whatever lengths were necessary to prevent someone else trying to do this for him again. Now that new hope was found, he knew that the third time was the charm. He would never again hesitate enough to necessitate someone else sacrificing themselves.

With his eyes open again, he saw he had to pace after the colourful troupe ahead of him. He couldn't really tell if it was either fate, the virtue of his orders leading them to him, or mere coincidence, that the monsters that Frisk had befriended so quickly were people all well known to him, despite them coming from different walks of life.

Undyne, captain of the royal guard, and his personal former apprentice in the arts of armed combat.

Sans, the royal judge, answering to no-one but him, and even he himself had close to no contact with Sans, in fact they drifted apart so much that Sans lived a complete life with no monetary strings attached and followed his duty on his own time.

Papyrus, A dear friend of Undyne and formerly the lab assistant back before Sans suddenly forgot his vast scientific knowledge. And now the self-declared ambassador of monsterkind to mankind. At least until Asgore would find someone more suited and would convince Papyrus that this wasn't that good an idea.

Alphys, the former royal scientist, tasked with finishing what Sans had started, who's experiments required him to make sacrifices he dare not even speak of.

And lastly Toriel. His dear sweet Tori. Formerly the wife he cherished and loved, and whom he still cherished and loved even to this day. They had been isolated from each other for almost fifteen years, and yet nothing between them had changed. She was so cruel to him, leaving his side, and giving him the cold shoulder when she was most needed. But he couldn't help but feel that he brought this on to himself.

They certainly didn't know what they were doing. Or what they were walking into for that matter. They simply moved on, one chasing after the other, but eventually marching forward as one group. Even Sans, despite strolling off in a completely different direction at the beginning, somehow ended up walking beside them.

"* Wait up! What's it you wanna do when we get there?" Undyne was asking because they were rapidly approaching a village down the hill they emerged from, and it was better to have a grasp on what Papyrus was going to do when he got there.

"REST ASSURED UNDYNE! I HAVE AN IRRESISTIBLE CHARM THAT WILL RAPIDLY ENTHRALL THESE HUMANS."

"* I kinda doubt that." Meanwhile she looked over to Alphys, who was keeping up to her surprise, but she was gnawing the tips of her fingers and her cheeks were blushing. "* And what're you thinking about doing?"

"* What I'm thinking about doing? Where do the things I think about doing end, the closer we get the more excited I am! Undyne!" She grabbed Undyne by her arms and forced her to stop. Probably in part to catch her breath. She went on with a frantic look in her eyes. "* Rabu Rabu Mecha, Kenshi no Tsurugi, Wataa Boizu, and so many more and they probably have all the later seasons up here! Which one to watch first, and how many times each one.." She kept going on but sheesh, she was without exaggerating, drooling on her hands while looking off to the side. In fact she was so lost in her nerdy trance, that Undyne simply grabbed her and dragged her along to catch up with the skeletons. They had one shot at this human-monster relation thing and Alphys' stuff simply had to wait.

They walked across buildings of very various condition. Some had clearly painted outside walls and porches. On others, by means of telling from the parts that had distinct painted colours, the exterior walls were run down, smeared with some unintelligible drawings or in some other way showing singns of lacking restoration. As they came across one of the first residencies, an old woman put down the book she was reading and went straight inside. She seemed to ingore Papyrus' loud and obnoxious greetings. On the other side of the road a child was riding a tricicle until suddenly and seemingly upon seeing Undyne and the others, a woman - presumably it's mother - dragged her into a house and closed the door behind them. The random ramblings and expressions of happiness and aspiration over their time in the underground being over and their new life on the surface beginning, gradually faded, leaving only behind an awkward silence as they moved on.

They were coming closer and closer to a forming crowd further down the road. One of the humans at the front, a man of tall and broad stature, wrinkles and short white hair telling of his age, was holding a rifle with a wide barrel, pointing it to the colourful troupe that was walking towards them. Undyne couldn't tell what kind of barrel it was. They didn't have a lot of those firearms in the underground, and knew little about how they worked. She only knew that what would come out at the front was probably quite deadly.

"* That's close enough.", the man said. He did something with the gun, which Undyne suspected was preparing a set of rounds to fire if needed. If she understood it right, it would go off once he now pulled the trigger. As they kept going for another few steps, he raised it and braced himself. "* Woah there."

"FEAR NOT MY FELLOW MAN, WE COME IN PEACE."

"* We get that a lot around here." This didn't seem to impress any of them.

As Asgore, still far behind, came in range of clear sight, an old lady from within the crowd - most of the people in the crowd seemed rather elderly- now alarmed and downright panicking shrieked. "* It's him! He's back! The child-murdering satyr grew up and came back to take revenge!"

Asgore froze. He stopped walking and didn't say a word. The man with the gun didn't seem to mind the other monsters any more, seeing as he simply pushed his way past between Undyne and the skeletons, to aim this deadly contraption of his straight at Asgore's head with not even a three-foot distance between them. "* You better have a damn good explanation why ol' marge said that."

Not much changed. Asgore was visibly trembling as he looked down on the ground. Everyone stood still for a few seconds. It took Undyne a while, but it was evident from his reaction. She could tell. She knew as well. She didn't actually witness any of it herself. She must have still been a little girl, not a year older than the prince himself when it happened. The humans that killed Asriel. This old woman older than the rest of them must have been there. She was one of them. If not, she was at least there when it happened. And didn't stop it. The sorrow and anger that Asgore showed when he declared war on humanity. The years dedicated just to getting out and taking revenge, he willingly laid it down in hopes he could try and move on. And all of the anger must have been coming right back. Undyne couldn't imagine what willpower it must have been taking for him, right now, just to stand there instead of burning this entire village down to cinders.

Eventually he mumbled, just loud enough for them and the man threatening him to understand. "* I am not who she thinks I am."

"* Then who?"

"* You humans murdered my son in cold blood. A child with no intent to harm you. And now you threaten to kill me as well?" Bluntly and calmly. She couldn't tell what it was, but there was something extremely subtle about how he said it. Anyone who didn't spend too much time with him probably couldn't tell. Something very unsettling. Even the man's resolve was broken, his weapon no longer pointing straight at the king's head. Asgore fidgeted at the front of his armor, opened up the core piece of the part of his armor that depicted the angel of death that all waited for, but never seemed to come, and from somewhere within he pulled forth a photo. "* Is this a face she remembers?"

The old man took it and headed back to the crowd. When the old woman inspected it, she was resuming her screaming. "* It's him! The satyr! It's him!", before being calmed down by the man who went back to Asgore. "* Come with me. We'll talk at mine." Halfway pushing Asgore with his hand on the significantly larger boss monster's upper arm, he guided him, and with him, the other monsters several crossings down the road.

He took a decisive turn towards a house eventually, the walls to the outside painted white, various flowers of purple and green colour decorated the area below the windows to both sides of the short set of stairs to the slightly above-ground entrance door. Due to daylight having been gone for a while, you could only make out the colours of the flowers once the light in front of the door lit up as the man approached it. "* Come in. All of you. Go on." He urged all of them on to enter, and had to repeat himself as Alphys found herself a little anxious to just enter a stranger's home with no introductions like that.

"* What are they?", a nervous voice echoed from down a hallway.

The source of the voice remained to be seen, but the man just responded with no sign of surprise that his presumed wife wasn't showing herself. "* Not sure yet. But I'm gonna take this one and trust them to have a nice talk. For the time being." The last sentence he spoke giving Asgore a grim look, and his voice took a turn that matched it.

"* I will answer whatever questions you may have."

"* I sure hope you will. Sit down." He guided them to the living room on the first door to the left. Paintings of green landscapes and busy squares hung on the walls. There were two settees and a similarly comfortably looking chair arranged around a low-height table, all of them facing a television while also arranged to look above the screen to see out of the window. These humans sure appreciated living in the sunlight.

"* Can I...?" The faceless voice continued.

"* They seem friendly. At least not hostile."

"* I assure you we are not." Asgore seemed understandably determined to appease these humans. One of the many things about him that Undyne admired. She was certain none of the humans would have lived for long, had she been in his shoes...or rather his footsteps.

Once all the monsters were settled down, the man finally continued. "* Right then, I wanna hear every single detail. Who and what are you? Where do you come from. Why are you here and what is talk of a satyr?"

What followed was their king giving a long and detailed description of pretty much everything they all knew or believed to know about the recent history of monsters. And in the beginning, even some things they didn't know. That were shrouded in exaggerations and myths and of which seemingly none of them knew. Instead of how invincible humans are and how the humans even had sorcerers that banished the monsters, he told of a few human knights that committed atrocities on the monsters, causing him to go on a murderous rampage, only to be banished into a vast and practically endless realm below the earth along with all of his kind as a punishment for what he alone had done.

After the surprising bit came the parts that didn't surprise anyone but perplexed their host as much as it did the monsters back when it happened. About how a human child fell into the underground. How he and his wife adopted it and lived with it as if it were their own. How Asgore's son picked up his dead sister, only to come back sustaining fatal injuries and only alive long enough to die right in front of the eyes of his parents. He remained honest about his rage for humanity. About his initial intentions for war. And about a human that came to their world, who befriended all of them. One after the other. Followed by the barrier mysteriously being lifted.

During all this, their host's intently listening wife finally showed her face to bring some cups of tea on a tray albeit being very slow and careful when approaching them. A curious little human girl came by. She wanted to see them, but when Undyne turned to her to try and give her a smile, this seemed to scare her off again.

By the time he was getting to the point where all the monsters had met up at the palace and after a short apparition, discovered the barrier to be lifted, the bell rang. Finally, the woman in the back paced past the open door to the entrance.

"* Uh...Howard?"

With an annoyed grunt, the man got up and went to the corridor behind the door. "* I...come in. Right here don't even think about going anywhere else." He muttered as he guided them to the living room the rest were sitting in. It was Toriel. Holding Frisk's hand as she entered.

Now looking at the two of them at the same time, Undyne was surprised. That little punk, when looking closely, didn't look one bit like those other humans. Their skin was much more pale - more of a beige-pink-ish tone than his yellow-ish face, and they didn't have these narrow, hard to read eyes that Frisk had. You could actually look at their eyes and see their pupils and the colours of their iris.

She noticed Asgore trying to sneak an eye on Toriel as she stroked the head of the child sitting on her lap and her giving him a mad look in return. No-one else seemed to notice though, as the man proceeded to ask Frisk to tell him his version of what happened in the underground. He had lengthy pauses between sentences, almost as if trying to remember things, even though they happened so recently, and even when he talked, he was stuttering from time to time.

"* So to you, this all just happened very recently. Do you want any help finding your parents? They've gotta be frantic by now."

"* No. She's my mom now.", he simply responded, before giving Toriel a hug. It was apparent she didn't object in the slightest, as she returned it and rubbed her cheek on his. No matter what human customs were, any person, or even any animal for that matter could see they were already sharing a bond. It was kinda cute as it is, but then he got up.

He walked across the little half-circle the couches were forming, straight to the king himself and stood right in front of him. Asgore answered Frisk's smile with his own. It was clear to him what he wanted to ask. "* Child. Saviour of my people. Would you grant me the honour and let me help raise you? As a father." The air was getting heavy. He hoped that at least not all of the others could tell, but he was fighting back the tears.

"* Yes." Frisk's eyes, for once widened enough to look into the clearly. "* Dad."

His lips were trembling. There was no way he could speak calmly. "* Aw come here little one." He just embraced the little fellow as far as his armour would allow it. He couldn't hold the tears back any more. He already felt relieved seeing the surface again, but it was only that moment when he was feeling like this wasn't just a bizarre dream, made of makebelieve of what he would wish to happen, that things going this way really overwhelmed him. All this was really happening. A life on the surface, raising a son, witnessing the happiness of his people when they would receive the news, and when they would step out as they had. Breathing in the reinvigorating air and seeing the bright light of the sun for the first time in their lives. "* Thank you. So much. For everything.", he whispered in tears. Still trembling from the realization.

After a few seconds, the child's arm rose and gave Asgore a few pats on his right pauldron, signalling to let go. As he walked back, calmly as ever, Asgore looked over to Tori. She was gesturing the child to come right back to her, and from the look on her face, she was very disapproving of what had just been said. She just tore so much at him inside.

"* But even so...where are your parents? Your real parents?", the grown human asked.

Frisk's face, a moment ago with a hearty smile, turned rather grim within a few seconds. "* I...I lived in a home. With other children. At Mt. Ebott."

"* Mt. Ebott? That's gotta be..."

Their guest host's wife was coming back with a tray to serve tea to everyone again. "* Aberdeen. Aberdeen Orphanage."

"WHAT? WHAT'S WRONG?" The larger of the two skeletons, even slightly taller than those humans, was asking this because Sans flinched in shock.

"* nothing. just thought of a joke..."

"* It's Aberdeen Orphanage. At the foot of Mt Ebott. They send children from the nearby cities there if they lose their parents."

Sans appeared a bit more curious than he pretended to be. He couldn't seem to help but ponder. "* the name...where's it from?"

"* Oh that's just a silly old nursery rhyme. It's about a child called Aberdeen who was orphaned and tries to make a home on a mountain. Wait..how'd it go again?" He closed his eyes for a moment to try and remember. "* 'Sansibar Aberdeen - homeless and prone. Lost both his parents with nowhere to go. Nobody bothered to give him a home, so off to Mt Ebott and all that alone. Step - step - march - march' - and then it goes on, but that's just a story to scare the kids." From the looks of it, this didn't really calm the little skeleton down.

He gave his brother a nervous nudge with his elbow. "* i guess you could say little sansibar was all ab.."

"SANS NO!" Papyrus screamed in shock at Sans's lack of consideration. Sans laughed it off, still scratching his head before retreating his hands back into his pockets. He was clearly trying to seem relaxed, but there was probably nobody in the room that didn't see a drop of sweat run down his skull at some point from then on in. Sans himself on the other hand was relieved to see them not ask further questions about that. The memories of everyone around were kinda messed up when he had his spontaneous one-week-as-the-royal-scientist incident.

Despite this little faux-pas, things were a little less tense now. Asgore found this to be the time to start being the ones that ask the question. "* Pray tell me why...I understand our appearance must seem confusing but your reaction to seeing us struck me as a little...exaggerated."

Undyne chimed in. "* Yeah, what was with this 'we get that a lodda round here' business?" She tried to impersonate him, but it didn't seem to upset this Howard much.

"* You really have been under a rock for hundreds of years haven't ya?"

"* What do you mean? Are you at war? Is there a warzone nearby?"

"* People say there isn't. But I don't trust these urban types. People have been disappearing and wherever these Orcs show up the neighbourhoods start gettin' all dangerous."

"* Wait." No. Please not. "* Did you say Orcs?"

"* Yeah. Big brown people with real big corner teeth."

There was no doubt something very grim was dawning on the king. Everyone noticed. He started breathing more intensely, his nose was slightly wrinkled but his eyes wide open as if he were preparing for imminent battle. "* What are they doing here? Why are they not in the Orc lands? Safely in the southern wilds?"

"* 'Cause there's war in the Orc Lands."

Asgore was furious, he was shouting involuntarily with such a piercing deep voice, nobody could help but feel the shudder to their core. "* There is **always** war in the Orc Lands!" The skeletons both laid a hand to his shoulderpad to try and calm him down. He noticed and no words needed to be spoken.

"* Simmer down. And when you talk to other people outside you better not call 'em 'wilds'. Orcs get offended very quickly."

"* Orcs? I meant the southern wilds. The Orc lands are in the southern wilds."

"* Wait..say that again?"

"* The southern wilds. The continent to the south."

"* That..." Howard simply broke off the conversation and got up. As Undyne wanted to do as he did to follow he gestured her to stay. "* Stay right there I'm just fetching something." He soon came back with a book he opened. It was a very wide and long one rather than thick and the reason was that it was an atlas. A current atlas of the surface. He opened a world map and placed it on the table in the center. "* Where exactly are your southern wilds?"

Asgore was already stretching his hand out, with the intention to outline it, but based on the large partially transparent labelings on it something that was strange and unsettling at the same time became apparent. The southern wilds. The entire continent, much much bigger than the human lands north of them, was gone. Well not gone, the land mass was there but the entirety of it was just labeled as 'The Orc Lands'. There were no southern wilds.

To say even after sitting there with an empty look on his face, breathing at various paces, to say he was still unsettled was an understatement. "* I'm sorry. I just need some time to digest this.", he eventually said.

Ever since the Orcs were first mentioned, something that Frisk noticed was that Toriel's grip was tightening. When he looked up, for the first time in countless 'runs' through the underground, he saw her look at her former husband with something other than contempt or a pretense thereof. Her eyebrows pointing up inwardly. "* Mom, what's going on? That hurts."

Her grip softened up at once. She hadn't even noticed. "* Oh I'm sorry my child. This...I will explain at some other point...maybe."

"* You know what? I truly sorry, but I need some time to assess the situation myself.

"* I can get that."

"* Are all your questions answered for the time being?"

"* For today, yeah. You staying up here?"

"* I would much like it."

Howard got up to fetch a piece of paper and a pen and wrote down a name and a number. "* Head there. They oughta have some rooms free right now. And one more thing." They were all already getting up and preparing to leave but froze at the tone of their guest host's voice. "* Watch your backs tonight. I believe you for now, but I'm just me."

"* That a threat, baldo?" Undyne had very quickly changed her stance in a way that others knew from when she fought. Faint blue light was shining from her hands for a brief moment, before Asgore himself reached to her with one of his broad arms and calmed her down.

"* It is a warning. What he alludes to is out of his control." He turned back to Howard once his guard was soothed. "* Understandable. I will keep it in mind." Finally everyone would leave the frought atmosphere of this house. "* My thanks for your hospitality."

"* You're welcome, strangers."

So there they went. All seven. Asgore and Undyne leading the way back to the sidewalk, off the clean and cared-for garden. The rest behind them, Tori still leading the child by the hand. In the middle of a suburban street with no idea where to go. Alphys asked to have a look at what the human had written down. It was a list of addresses. Rigsby Road 21 it read at the end. Alphys was capable of very quickly finding the tiny, hard-to-spot signs that bore the names of the roads. Asgore soon understood that the addresses listed were a path, so they could reach their desination without having to rely on knocking on doors to ask the locals and potentially scare them even more. The depth of her understanding of post-barrier human culture never ceased to surprise. Despite her questionable tastes for human art.

The elderly man they visited must have called the rest of the villagers off, for the streets were empty. Only sporadically did they come across a person who quickly rushed behind a door when they saw them. It was quite a walk half-way across the village with white moonlight shining down on the pavement. There were street lamps but they weren't on. They had to pass a very broad road to get to where they were going.

Their destination was a building, significantly bigger than the rest of the village. The landscape behind it seemed strangely familiar. Two stone walls enclosed the wide rode that led up to it, with walkways on both sides leading into it's courtyard. From the walls on the left hand side was a wide paved area with human-built horseless carriages, 'cars' as they were called. For a human, this must have been a mansion, but the entrance door was bigger and so were the windows. The name made it clear to him why this place was familiar. "* Miarim Inn" It was a different building. Even bigger in exact size than what he remembered. And it was now surrounded by paved roads and buildings, rather than just being a house in an empty landscape. But the area in the distance was the same. Once the boss monsters would start leaving the underground he had to bring his sister right here. Because this used to be where she lived.

It was a relief to see a human building that wasn't such a bother to move into. He didn't have to carefully squish through the doorway, rearranging or partially taking his armor off at times as he had to at Howards. There must have been some sentimental reason for this, or maybe travellers of similarly superhuman size would visit this area.

They all followed in, as the lights were on and the door unlocked. It didn't seem to be what he expected of an inn. The walls were clean, white and adorned with a circular pattern at the bottom segment. A bucket with umbrellas laid to the right of the entrance door and chandeliers with electric light hung from the ceiling.

It was silent and they didn't see anyone down the corridor. "* Miles!" But they heard something. "* Get back here!"

"* No."

They figured the humans here were rather anxious. Moreso than some of the other villagers. Asgore gave Toriel a distinct look. And she understood at once. With Frisk following, she walked across the red carpet that bore a complicated flower pattern. The light behind the next wall to the right seemed to come from a small open room with a long counter. "* Greetings. We were referred to here to stay the night."

"* ..." Across the counter stood a single person. A scrawny young man with orderly-cut short brown hair, wearing a tight red suit with a red tie. He wasn't moving an inch and behind a forced smile on his mouth hid a gaze of genuine terror, betrayed by the look in his wide-open eyes. He started to talk very slowly at first. "* Greetings. How can I be of service?"

"WE WISH TO RESIDE WITHIN YOUR SPLENDOROUS ESTABLISHMENT FOR A WHILE." Oh wow. Sans guessed if he was gonna throw big words around like this maybe him pushing himself to the forefront with this whole ambassador thing wasn't gonna end up so bad after all.

The man behind the counter took a deep breath without even opening his mouth. He then, still very slowly lifted a hand to raise an index finger. "* One moment of patience please." He then calmly walked away through a door in the back. "* They want to stay here."

"* What? How long?"

"* I dunno."

"*We can't afford six lawsuits. Just go along with it." Asgore figured not everone could them. If they cared thhear them talking in the back, but it was funny that they seemed to think nobody could hear at was. The man came back and continued. "* Wonderful. How many nights would you like to stay?"

"* We are not yet certain. Is there a restriction?"

"* Of course not. You are welcome to stay as long as you like." He was lying. He could tell he was lying because when he said that he avoided eye contact for a brief second. He just didn't want to upset them.

"* Four rooms please." The man shuffled nervously to an oak wood board that hung on the wall and lifted four keys with small number plates off their hooks before coming back and placing them on the desk.

"* Any other wish?" Asgore suppressed a smile when he saw instant regret flash up on his expression.

"* Maybe some water. For each of us." A good opportunity to test this hotel in regards to the intentions of it's staff. The staircase, the corridors above, the doors to the room, to a smaller degree even the interior of the rooms themselves didn't seem like they were made for humans. Everything was bigger. The walls upstairs were decorated with tapestry and there was a window on both sides of it. Each room they were given was a sizeable room with a separable double bed and at least one window. The same wooden cupboard in all of them, the same tables at the side of the beds, identical like in a modern hotel.

Asgore handed the keys to the two rooms in the third floor to Toriel and the skeletons, while he, Undyne and Alphys took the ones in the first. He closed and locked the door behind himself. Just as he had told the others and hoped they heeded his words. He was exhausted. He finally had an opportunity to calmly undo the straps that held the pieces of his golden armor together and take it off piece by piece, including the cape.

He didn't ask for tea because he feared they wouldn't have any. And he regretted it now. What he wished for to relax was to try one of the many different leaves and plants they didn't have access to down there. He just sat at the side of the bed. Still and thinking. About what he learned on the surface, and about how he got here. He fought Frisk, Tori stopped him from making a grave mistake, everyone else gathered, a flower appeared, but then a white light surrounded everything. When they came to, they found the barrier to be lifted. How exactly was the barrier lifted? And why did they gather anyway? He didn't remember. On the other hand, did it really matter? The prophesy of the Delta Rune - a story - a speculation - made based on nothing and solely to plant misplaced hope in the hearts of his people, came true.

He laid back. He was such a disgrace. His people eagerly awaiting freedom, a lot of them probably unaware that they already have it, and he was lying there, thinking about why a story he made up ended up happening. A broken man, that never...wait.

Someone was knocking on the door. He didn't even bother to put on his armor again. What did it matter how someone saw him at this point. "You ordered something to drink?" It was the young man from downstairs. On one hand he was balancing a tray that bore a bottle of mineral water, guessing from what it read at the front, and a glass. With the other he took out a handkerchief from his jacket pocket.

The worn-down boss monster nodded and stepped aside. "* Of course, come in." Poor human. He was trembling with every step. Even his voice was shaky. He couldn't just sit there and watch this, not forever. "* Listen young one." As expected, he froze before turning to him. "* If you're in such terror, you can just ask us to leave and we will." He could hear the page's breath turn more even.

"* Come on. None of us can relax here like this. Take a seat." He followed suit. He sat on the chair that lay next to the table he placed the tray on. "* Is there anything you want to know? Any questions?" He stayed silent. "* There are no bad questions. Whatever it is however provocative or insulting..."

Finally. Still in panic, the young man spoke up. "* Yes...sir..with all due respect...What...are you?"

"* We are monsters."

"* You do look like monsters..." He was pretty certain that this didn't mean the type of creature, but some modern application for the unknown.

Asgore was sort of perplexed. It didn't sound like he was using the word 'monster' the same way as he was. "* Wait...do you even know what monsters are?"

"* As it would seem, I'm afraid not Ssir." He looked down.

"* Surely something has to be left behind us. There are so many notable ones you humans kept telling stories of. What about the 'gods' and 'spirits' and 'magical creatures' you used to refer to us with?"

"* Those are all terms that say something, but that's all fiction, right? Myths are myths."

"* Really? Am I a myth? Am I not here? Right in front of you?" He already had an idea. Not so much an actual idea but an inkling that might lead to an idea. "* This hotel is rather big for humans. And I couldn't help notice the name."

"* Yes sir...what about it?"

"* The name Miarim. Where exactly does it come from?"

The page cracked a nervous smile. "* That's just something we're told to tell guests to attract tourists."

"* Don't tell me why you don't believe it. Tell me what it is."

"* Okay. So there was this tall mountain deity who had a house out in the fields. She could heal wounds so fast, that even fatally wounded people weren't fatally wounded to her. And she could cure any disease the people that came to her would have. Then one day she left and said her family needed her, and that she would come back whenever she could. And the story is that this place is built bigger because we still wait for her to come back, and that if people just believe, she might."

"* Was this so hard?"

The page, now a bit more relieved, nodded."* We all need to know it off by heart. So I guess not...But this doesn't make sense. This isn't a house or a temple, it's a hotel."

"* Of course it is. You humans are crafty. Someone knew or thought the story was true, so they rebuilt it and kept it up in whatever manner that would allow to finance it. If it was just a house, it would get sold and someone would eventually tear it down to build an ordinary one here instead. But a hotel needs to attract tourists. And curious oddities such as this scaling fulfil that purpose. They gave the size a purpose, and so they made it stay."

"* Are you telling me it's true?"

Asgore laughed. He wasn't even pretending, this was actually funny to him. "* Being called thatmust have really flattered her. I knew she lived here. And that she treated humans. But mountain goddess...this one is new. And she never told me about it."

"* So she was real..."

"* IS real. She is still alive. Alive and sound in the underground. She has a husband and three children." He wasn't sure, but he thought he finally got this stranger to believe him. "* If you let us stay here, I promise - no I swear, we pay for our stay as in order, and we bring you your 'mountain deity' back." He couldn't help laughing at least silently with a wide grin on his face, every time he said it.

"* Either way sir, I'm sorry but this is all a bit much. And kinda hard to believe."

"* Understandable." Asgore asked for the time for breakfast and then locked the door behind the young man again, when he left.

It was saddening actually. It was in everything the humans said and did, in every expression on their faces. The child was a child. Believing in monsters, especially when they saw them wasn't difficult to them. But these people were grown-ups. Completely devoid of any sense of wonder or curiosity that comes with seeing things one couldn't explain or comprehend.

When the monsters were sealed into the underground, a huge amount of other monster populations of kinds he had never seen were brought there with the monsters he belonged to. From all over the world, speaking in tongues and languages he didn't understand. They were simply brought to different places within the underground and he never dared himself explore the complete entirety of it. Following that one path from the entrance to the first dead end they could find and making their home there was more than enough. When you really did, it was too vast. His was the civilization that was placed below the entrance, the place where only the barrier stood between the endless halls of rock and the surface. Then, and over time he came to a realization.

They used to rule the world. Together. Since the dawn of history as was known to him, wherever there were humans on the world, there were monsters as well. The natural state of humans and monsters was to live together. Now Asgore got to see what several centuries without monsters would do to them. The natural state was perverted. And the humans only remained a shadow of themselves.

* * *

"By now, you have probably noticed that there is a slight discrepancy between his highness' 'treat everyone as an individual and be merciful whenever you can' approach when dealing with most people, and his 'slaughter them with no remorse' approach when dealing with Orcs."

"kinda hard to miss."

"That's because it's his fault that they are here to begin with. They used to have a natural border surrounding and containing them known as 'The Webbed Ring' and back then he thought it would help them to tear it down. I could tell you the entire story, and who knows, if there is demand, I might, but for now, here's the short version. He tore an opening to free the Orcs, but when he came back, he found the forest to the immediate north to be chopped down and all the wood elves that used to live there, were dead. The culprit, to his shock, were the Orcs themselves. The very same ones that he freed.

They killed everything in their path, and so they tried to kill him. He defeated them easily and spared as many as he could. But he made them promise that they would stick with the lands they took and use those to feed themselves. About fifteen years later, he found that the Mtendere to the west, the human settlers to the east and the wood elves north of the Webbed ring had sustained great losses ad the hands of the Orcs. He flew across to find anything, but all he found were ever expanding populations of orcs in huts built upon burned-down villages and towns. And once again, they tried to kill him. He was so angry over what they had done, that he didn't just fight them into submission, he killed them all, but he couldn't bring himself to lay a single hand on the children.

One child sprung into his eye more than any, and every time he tells this story, he talks about this one particular child with a sideways scar on their right cheek. He kneeled down to level with it and tell them, that the bloodshed had to end. That they had to change their ways, because losing family like that would always be the result of attacking and killing others. So he spared the children. But the next time he ventured into the southern wilds, he found they had wiped out the races that surrounded their original homeland, and this time, the Orcs had expanded enough to prepare for him. They had tamed behemoths, giant creatures with extremely thick skin, coated in thick, brown fur and with dome-shaped bulks for horns. He wasn't prepared for them, but his father came to his aid just in time. For our king to survive though, Asgrim sacrificed his own life. And Asgore tried to recover from this, but at least when it came to Orcs, he was never the same.

But in hindsight, he's right about them. The brownskins never improve, they raid and pillage whenever they don't have enough, and they never do have enough because they overreproduce relentlessly."

"BROWNSKINS?"

"Ugh, sorry, get the names mixed up. The Brownskins are distant descendants, the Empire never actually purges them completely, doesn't matter, back to the Orcs. There is no real reasoning with them. No matter what you say, no matter what they say, you need to keep in mind that their tears are a pretense and their words are always empty. There is no peace wherever they're allowed to be.

"wait...are you saying that..."

"Death is a part of life, my dear Sans. Besides even if the humans kept feeding them indefinitely, once they're done pillaging all the remaining non-orc nations, what would happen? The planet itself, or rather the vacuum and the stretch to the next inhabitable planet would become a new natural border and they would sink back into starvation and war as they always have, whenever there was something even resembling a border. In both scenarios you will have the Orcs suffering mass starvation and war. The only difference is that if you accomodate them, everyone else gets wiped out as well. And it took our king over half a century just to learn that lesson. Every people that lets them enter their own lands wishes for the extinction of their own kind."

"if...why? why do the humans do it then?"

"Ugh, that's where we get to the elves."


	2. through a blue iris

_The Monster King's Resolve_

 _Chapter 2: Through a blue iris_

* * *

"So. Now that the really dangerous bits of your time up here are over, we can finally sit back and summarize and refresh every single thing that's needed for you to understand the things that happened ever since you left..."

"E-Excuse me..is this going to take long?"

" **Yes!** "

"Ouch!"

"Now then. Determination. Every human soul produces determination. The determination of humans comes at varying degrees of strength. That individual strength of determination loses it's meaning once there is more than one soul involved in one body, but most of the time that's not the case or is it?

So luckily - or unluckily - depends on how things would have played out if not, the only entrance to the underground lying on mount Ebott provided us with a filter that would lead to only humans with very, very strong determination entering the underground. At all times, the person - one person - with the strongest determination in the world, can manipulate time. SAVE, LOAD and RESET. The others who still belong to the very strongest in determination, a very select few at any given time, if a single person that determined exists in the first place, can remember beyond the fabric of time. If a timeline is erased by resetting or loading to a past point, they can remember the timeline the way it was before. Under certain circumstances, they can even remember things that happened to their own counterparts in other universes.

The reason, Papy, why you forgot about me wasn't because you didn't believe in me strongly enough or some nonsense like this. It was because I and little Sans had a tiny dose of very strong determination injected into our circulation, but you did not. Our memories are immune to any manipulation of timelines. Look out of the window. See that mountain in the distance? If I were to travel back in time to prevent that mountain from ever being formed and then came back, Sans would remember what it was like when it was there, you however would not. We can remember everything that happened. Even the things that never did. Some would see it as a curse, others as a blessing."

"it's more of a curse though."

"...WAIT A MINUTE!"

"what?"

"YOU NEVER TOLD ME THIS...IF THIS IS TRUE, HOW MUCH ACTUALLY HAPPENED YOU NEVER TOLD ME ABOUT IT?"

"It's like he said. 'Curse' does describe it a lot more accurately."

* * *

"BUT I WANT TO GO NOW!"

"* pshhh calm down bro. they're all taking a long nap right now."

Papyrus did comprehend what he said, but he couldn't help it. He needed to take a deep breath to calm down and really lower his voice. "IT'S JUST SO EXCITING! I WANT TO SWOON THEM WITH COOLNESS." Geez. Even when whispering he was talking all in capitals.

"* woah woah, there's gonna be time for all that. but not now. c'mon, it's time for bedtime stories."

"OH BOY."

Without much protest, his brother swung over to the bed and pulled up the sheets before turning to Sans and intently listen.

Sans sighed. He didn't have a children's story book with him. So he guessed he just went back to improvising. "* okay, so the great papyrus had only passed the desert and reached the temple of Nadun..." When he didn't have a book, he just resumed telling and adding to the same story every time. He had started just going by the comics they found in Papyrus' old home. His way old home. That was where he got the name from. The Great Papyrus. Comics he seemed to draw himself, about a sand elf that saved a town from a band of bandits, saved children from a life in slavery and tricked corrupt kings and high priests to protect the people he loved. Of course he had to simplify it before he could tell it to his brother, but nonetheless that was where it came from. Eventually he was done with everything Papyrus had drawn and started just making up names and new stories. His brother didn't even seem to care that fictional Papyrus must have been an old man by the point he was at.

He went on for a little, even after his brother had closed his eye-sockets and was audibly sleeping, just to make sure he was asleep. He too laid down. There was no way he could sleep, but he relaxed. And this one time, he relaxed for real. Gave him time to think. It was hard to wrap his head around it. It was still hard to really get the feeling it was over. Not just the being in the underground bit, the whole the-same-time-frame-repeating-itself-over-and-over bit. Strictly speaking he had given up the first time around. He must have spent about a thousand years reliving the same one to four years again and again. Yes, any years that passed in their full length in one piece, he counted. He couldn't note it down, so what did it really matter if it was probably more.

Each time, everything he did, every time he made an effort to surprise someone, every time he saved a kid's life, every time he tried to get anything done, it would end with things being reset and all that he gained from it was the knowledge of how people reacted when he did these things. Eventually, he just stopped. With all of it. No more trying to keep kids that fall into the underground alive, no more working out keeping his body and soul in shape in case of an emergency, no more stopping accidents he knew about from erased timelines. What was the point? His efforts were in vain whether he made them and got them overridden or whether he simply didn't make them in the first place. He even knew that it must have been something specific, because some things did change when he wasn't looking. And sometimes, Papyrus or his fish friend went to prevent accidents they couldn't know were gonna happen. He knew something to that effect was going on. He just didn't even care at this point.

He found a shimmer of hope when it came to a stop at some point. No more resets But after about ten years, his break came to a stop. Ten years weren't enough to lift his spirits completely, but it was enough to get him off his butt and try to find out some stuff. Actual stuff that mattered. Before that, he didn't know there was a necessity to, and by the time he knew something or someone was responsible for the resets, he didn't even care any more. What he could salvage from the old equipment, he eventually put together into something he could try and make sense with. He repaired some of the old measuring devices to measure event sequences. From there, it was easy to distinguish repeating timelines, to tell which series of events were to what degree natural. Which at the beginning meant nothing, all the areas he measured showed no interference between resets whatsoever.

After a few resets, in came Frisk for the very first time. They really were just a little kid. Completely confused, drenched in tears and slurping through the snow. And they only stopped crying and got up half way to the bridge Sans planned on confronting him at. A few cheap jokes got them to calm down enough. He couldn't help it at the time. Before the kid even reached the town of Snowdin, his suspicion was already confirmed. All areas, objects and people that exhibited unnatural event series were the ones the kid came by. The anomalies all culminated around them.

And they really were a good kid. Sans watched them whenever he could, and they always tried - and mostly succeeded - to reason with the people they met. Everyone they met outside was trying to kill them on sight, and they always, sometimes desperately, looked for some way to spare them and be spared themselves. Even if it meant dying several times each time. They died again and again on each encounter until they knew every monster's attacks off by hand and could get past them without getting hit even once. After all, if they got hit once, they soon died to the injuries. Sans didn't make an effort beyond the usual pranks and get-togethers he had prepared in case the kids that fell down came far enough to reach them, but he still really liked this kid. When he saw them befriend Papyrus, he decided to pop by before they got too deep into Waterfall to spend some time with them at Snowdin. Gave him the opportunity to ask about a potential clue from Papyrus.

When Undyne started taking things in her own hands, those things changed. Most monsters, not to say all the others until then only hesitantly attacked them, and they only did because not doing so would have been treason, but she was completely relentless. Threw volleys of spears, summoned spears in the kid's direct vicinity to impale them, chased them through the dark corners of Waterfall and never gave them a good break. The kid really must have been scared to death throughout the entire ordeal even more than otherwise. And all that was even before they actually really fought for the first time. Sans could feel things getting even more repetitious than beforehand. The timeframes that repeated themselves got shorter and shorter. And Frisk's dodging performance got worse too. A single near-death experience scars a person for life. It was hard to imagine the place the kid was in, having died completely so many times and dying over and over. And the place they were heading for. Again and again and again and again, the kid just took it and let Undyne kill them, the fear and the pain really must have worn them down.

Because eventually they snapped. Completely. When Sans 'woke up', he hadn't even met the kid yet. This time, they were calm when they first reached the path to Snowdin. Still with their neutral-looking face, but with no tears, no crawling, no crying, just walking along calmly with a dusty plastic knife in their right hand. This time, Sans' routinely used analyzers showed him that the kid had acquired EXP. A lot of it. They must have killed everyone in those ruins. Even the funny voice from just beyond the door was gone as Sans would find out later. For a brief moment, Sans caught himself dropping the act of not remembering. He even warned - no - threatened the kid. He hoped that that would get them to stop. But for the time being, what did it matter? As long as he wouldn't have to see his brother share the same fate, the kid could just reset and nothing had happened. After all, whatever happened, no matter how cruel and horrible, was just gonna be reset into not happening. At least he thought so.

When Papyrus had his grand entrance once again, Sans thought the kid had caught themselves and were pulling themselves out of the dark place they were in. What next happened was the reason why he got to work. The kid didn't continue. At first they walked onwards uneasily, looking like they had seen the light. Then suddenly, albeit very subtly, their facial expression changed and with it, so did their intention, as they turned things back to when they were entering Snowdin and killed Sans' brother in cold blood.

From how the numbers on the display changed, he could see it happening before his very eyes. The more people they killed, the easier it got to get themselves to kill and the more deadly every strike they landed on someone became. Sans was lucky to have all these abilities installed. Allowed him to head to the workshop, work there and be back as if he wasn't even gone. Not like the kid took notice of his presence most of the time anyway.

He used whatever time Frisk spent slaughtering everyone that Sans knew, to repair the broken machine's navigation system. To at least see ahead of time how far the kid would go. It allowed him to measure timelines within the space-time continuum that hadn't happened yet. Including coordinates in space and time and the ability to latch onto targets, such as the kid. That was when he started really paying attention. Noticing that it wasn't entirely meaningless. There seemed to be something...a genuine threat. A panic-inducing threat. Many that weren't his age probably would have just taken their own lives when seeing the result. The timelines - all of them - simply ended. There was no future. Literally. The universe was ending within a day. There was no time to measure after that.

What had he been thinking. Even if the kid had somehow managed to go through all of the underground and to the palace, what then? Be killed by the king? Like that was gonna happen, time was wound back whenever they died. Best case scenario, they killed Asgore and left, leaving all monsters trapped. There was no hope. There never was. All that Sans could do, was to fulfill his duty and do what he could to stop this...thing. The nonchalant demeanour, the lack of emotion, or any hesitation to end lives, this was not the kid he first met. Maybe it was back when they met, but that wasn't what they had become. All Sans could hope for, was that deep down, that kid he met, the innocent child wrought with loss and confusion, was still there.

All that he could do, was to return to assume his unofficial role as the royal judge, and to give this kid as bad a time as he could. The time the rest of the monsters in and around New Home evacuating the entire area as they approached the city, Sans spent watching the kid's every step and checking back up with all of his abilities. He used every second he had to try them all out and make sure he could use them as routinely as possible with whatever time to practise he had. He already was using his teleportation all the time. His gravitational realignment...or as his brother used to call it 'the blue attack' was working. Telekinesis seemed to work fine. He could use both on dead objects and monsters, so they probably worked on humans too. His Gaster Blasters were working fine.

What took the most time to test when watching the kid from the distance was the power converter. He was really out of shape, and any attempts at changing that were pointless, seeing as the strength of his body and soul got turned back whenever time was LOADed back as well. It did work though, it took a few tries, but he could convert quite a bit of what little his power currently was into speed. He was going to have to dodge every single attack the kid was going to launch, but despite everything, he was content that he could do this for however long was necessary. As for his karmic retribution, he simply had to hope that it was on and working. There was no way he could afford to head into the depths of the lab to check. He instead just headed straight for the place where it would end either way, and downed an entire bottle of ketchup as his last meal.

When the kid arrived at the palace, the killing still hadn't stopped. There was no backing out any more. Sans stood firmly within the golden walls of the final corridor before the throne room. And as expected, as was probably unavoidable, the kid arrived as well. It seemed the humans and their religion he knew from the surface were right all along. Judgement day had come and the only one to represent humanity, was a child that murdered everyone they met - men, women, children - everyone, even people they themselves noticeably had come to like before. And he knew that after judgement day, came the literal end of days.

He fired up the backup Gaster-Nerator in his eye to access whatever power he could muster. What followed was the longest challenge Sans had faced in all of his life. By far. If you included all the tries that never happened, it probably was the longest and most desperate battle in all of recent history. he scratched every try off Frisk that he could. He was happy to see his karmic retribution working. It took Frisk many tries to understand why and how the bones Sans summoned weren't dematerializing after their collision, but passed right through him, followed with his skin and sometimes what was below, getting dissolved within seconds. He despised them for the things they did, and hurting them wasn't anything difficult for Sans. Killing them wasn't anything difficult.

He simply held on. No matter how often the kid would simply try again after dying, Sans did not let them pass. At all. He pulled every dirty trick he could think of and showed no mercy. Whenever the kid lived a little longer, he came up with something new. Trapping them in moving mazes of platforms and bones, , filling almost all of the area the kid could have moved in with steady streams of his Gaster Blasters, realigning how gravity affected Frisk while at the same time summoning bones exactly where gravity was taking them, breaking the fourth wall to reason with the player, attacking Frisk when it wasn't even his turn, turning the lights off while preparing his attacks. He pulled no punch he could think of.

Eventually, he still had a lot of tricks prepared, but he was sweating. He could feel that he was worn down. Not mentally, but physically. When he noticed, he tried something else. Something else entirely. Honesty. He took a step back, and told the kid everything about why he was bothering to fight. How he could feel that deep somehow deep down inside Frisk, that child he met, that friend, was still there. He was prepared to keep fighting. He didn't expect to get anything from this. But then again he tried a lot of things before, that he thought wouldn't do anything against someone who beat everyone else, and they all ended up killing them one way or another. But from these they kept coming back to try to pass him again every time.

Here it was different. Hearing Sans pour out his heart to Frisk, reaching out to them like that as probably one of the first, if not the very first person that was nice to him since they arrived, really startled them. They relaxed. No longer in a battle stance preparing his next attack and stood there. Frozen and with an empty look on his face. In the middle of his time standing still, he gulped. Frisk next, with a look on his face now different from at any time during his rampage, They turned around. They sat down, leaning against a pillar and, with the knife still in their hand, covered their face.

A lot of time passed during all this. It started with a few sobs. But they soon started crying again. Crying more than they were when Sans first snuck around them when they passed the door to Snowdin for the first time. Only that it didn't stop. It went on, and went on, they couldn't even remain seated, they lied there, crouched together on the floor. Sans just stood there. He was patient. Patient because he was thinking about what was going on. If this was some trick to get him to move closer or to move close enough to stab him, then Frisk would have either noticed pretty early that it wasn't working, or made some attempt to crawl towards him. But neither was the case. Sans was surprised a human being even had so much water to spare.

He was growing more and more sure that his suspicion wasn't wrong. The kid that he befriended was still in there. All of their struggles when they were trying to avoid bloodshed they were already reacting weirdly stoic, in that they never took the time to cope with it. Add to that the fact that in their desperation and subsequent lack of faith, murdered all those people with their own hands. There was a reason why their battle came to such a long pause. Why the tears just kept and kept and kept running. They finally took the time to let it all out, and until then, they never had.

But to a certain degree, he never really believed this would work, until then. He didn't know how long the kid was just lying there, he never took an eye off them. But he never actually completely expected them to get up, drop the knife and slowly, tears still running, shuffle in Sans' direction. He had told the kid pretty much that he was going to kill them anyway. There was no way they couldn't see the sweat dropping from Sans' skull. It was as clear as day that at some point, even if only once, Sans would be beaten and that it was only a question of time. Was this it, had he really reached through to him? From what it looked like, yes. The kid was pretty far away from the knife now, but they were moving very slowly. Hesitantly. They were afraid. They knew what Sans was gonna do when he arrived. And they had dropped their knife regardless.

Once they were only really one step away from Sans, Sans summoned up a cage of bones around them. Only with the entire interior filled with bones as well. As the child winced in pain as their skin was being etched away within seconds, Sans moved close enough to whisper to him: "geeettt dunked on. if we're really friends, you won't come back". Despite everything he had seen, even that last gesture of his, he never was really sure about this. In the final moments before Frisk's certain death, he was still expecting to see that nothing had changed and the kid had come back to keep trying.

He was proven wrong. The next thing he knew, he wasn't in New Home any more, but in Snowdin once again. Between the trees where he was when it all started. He had made it. He had gotten through to them. Dug them out of this heap of madness and despair that the crazy situation they all were in had buried them in. They were friends after all. And his friendship, however short or meaningless it was, meant enough to bring back sense to someone who had lost all of their sanity. And from then on in, they stayed stoic and stable for as long as Sans could remember.

This didn't stop them from resetting over and over again. Trying out all sorts of combinations of decisions, looking to discover all the little secrets and details the underground had to offer, but what Sans had accomplished was to be there when this kid, much more kind to the monsters they met than the previous ones the first time round, themselves were in their darkest hour. And he prevented that darkest hour from reaching it's conclusion. They didn't gather much, when they figured out how, even no EXP at all. When he parted ways with them after meeting at Grillby's, Sans decided that this was an opportunity to repeat this repair on the navigation system.

Repairing it revealed that he really had done it. The future existed again. The timelines were still going crazy, culminated at one point and drifted apart again, similar how light moved together and then apart again when you broke it with a lens, but at least they all led to somewhere. There was no hope to leave the underground. What was Frisk gonna do? Turn into a monster? Like that was gonna happen. But at least there was hope to continue staying alive down here.

It was really weird seeing them repeat their journey again and again, a bit different each time. Saving a kid, not saving a kid, killing a Whisperer, sparing that same one, sparing Undyne, killing Undyne, saving Undyne, sparing Papyrus, dating Papyrus and so on. Thinking about it, who could blame them? If Sans had the same ability to just revert everything he did, whatever it was that he did, he would stop caring about the lives of the people around him too. What point was there in sparing or saving lives if death could be undone with no problems? He just went back to not caring. Got into a routine, blended into the monsters that couldn't remember past timelines as well as possible. Checked all his cues in Frisk's travels, remembered to sit in all the outposts, memorized all his lines and repeated them, hung out at Grillby's and the MTT restaurant with them, and each time they were done and had reached the barrier, he gave them his obligatory phone call to describe what happened after they left.

Looking back, it would have been a better idea to take the hint. If they beat the king, why was time reset? Again and again? All those completed travels through the underground and they kept resetting. It was obvious. The kid actually thought there was hope. Hope for the monsters to leave the underground. They were trying out all the variants, seeing if they could cause some change that would somehow allow them to leave. At one point, they eventually went out of their way, be it for the sake of consistency or out of an empty guess, to travel through the entirety of the underground sparing everyone with no exceptions, like they did at the beginning when they left the ruins for the first time. That alone didn't seem to change much. But that didn't stop them from trying again and again. Sparing everyone but making smaller decisions differently. They saved monster kid, cooked with Undyne, dated Papyrus, they seemed to wonder: were they trying this with too much nuance? Could simply doing one's best to be nice to everyone be the solution? At least that was the only rationale on the kid's part that could explain this to Sans.

Sans still didn't believe they could leave the underground. That any of this was ever gonna end. He did appreciate the effort though so he tried to give them a little surprise. A little fun in their endless repetition couldn't hurt, could it? Over the many runs Frisk had completed, Sans kept up a pretense that he had dropped when it was needed beforehand. Now it was time to test if they had forgotten that Sans could remember Or if they ever really figured it out. He used a system of pre-memorized codes to give them the impression he would need that. Used it to play a prank that would only work if they thought he couldn't remember. And he didn't even have to be there. He told Papyrus ahead of time he was gonna trick Frisk across space and time. And it worked.

Wasn't like they were gonna make any sense of it. Papyrus' badge, Sans' photos with the other kids, the broken time machine...the blueprints for an actual time machine and several other devices that would have an insane power in the wrong hands...well good thing they were just a kid and a nice one at heart too.

What Sans remembered, was that eventually Papyrus started gathering all six of them at the palace. He told them when they arrived, that again, a flower had told him to do that. Then, the flower finally showed up in person for a brief moment. But nobody remembered what happened then. Last that anyone could remember, was that all were talking and Frisk was asleep and that by the time they woke up, the barrier was lifted. Nobody seemed to be able to explain how. Did Frisk somehow magically remove it while nobody was looking? He couldn't help but think it had something to do with the flower. While Frisk was asleep, he asked Papyrus a bit more directly about the flower, and what he got again was that it was a golden flower. Like the ones Alphys was experimenting with in the old lab. She must have really created some kinda 'vessel', a new sentient life form. And what's more, he never actually met this talking flower. In all the timelines. So whoever or whatever they were, they not only could remember removed timelines telling from the times Papyrus saved people based on 'predictions' that flower made, but they were making a conscious effort to avoid Sans and they were very, very good at hiding.

Kinda funny looking back at the implication. A talking flower lifted the barrier and saved everyone while nobody was looking. Sans wasn't really the type that was into legends and myths and all that stuff, but he still thought it had suited things a bit better if the end would have been more...epic? Biblical? Messianic? Nonetheless the kid had made it. Somehow he made it. Perhaps all this time, he wasn't trying out variants out of fun or curiosity. He was systematically looking for the one timeline that would set them free. Doing the exactly right thing, the moment he had for good gotten his head around the endless dying and staying determined thing.

And the kid he got to know the first time around, and the many runs after that...their demeanour, their personality on a subtle level, it felt like that person and the creature with that creepy, somewhat familiar smile that was looking through every nook and cranny, just to be sure to have murdered everyone that was in any area they passed through, were two completely different people. It was just too hard to believe and every bit of Sans' intuition was telling him otherwise.

* * *

 _The very first few chapters I'll publish a bit faster, because they're among other things just reintroduction and going over things that people already know from the game, such as the characters, what happens before the pacifist ending and so on. It's a really long story._

 _This one is basically to establish that the way up to the pacifist ending involves all routes to some degree, because I saw a lot of stories just pretend that a lot of them never happened, which I don't think is likely._


	3. Nightly reflections

The Monster King's Resolve

Chapter 03

Nightly reflections

* * *

He couldn't sleep. No matter how tired he was, more and more questions were coursing through his mind. All the mistakes he might have made in the past, the losses he suffered from them. The mountain kingdom under his father was stable, and had been stable for a long time. Why was it Asgore himself, with whom it went all downhill? He lost his family, his life on the surface, his hope for freedom...his son...his wife. Tori. No, not Tori. Toriel. He had to get over Toriel. The more positively he would think of her, the more devastating and aggressive her rejections would become. If he wanted to survive interacting with her as often as he would have to, he had to gain some emotional distance.

The humans seemed terrified and pushed to a brink. There was no telling what they were going to do. Not later on a bigger scale, and not sooner. What if one of them would think to do something rash just tonight? After all, if they scared them, they were probably scared the most now when monsters could not be a newer thing to them. He got back up and strapped one piece of armor after the other back on.

When he left, he saw he wasn't alone. "* Go to bed, Undyne."

Undyne was standing in the hallway, nervously resting on one leg, with a blue spear in her hand. Staring down the staircase. "* But the humans. What if..."

"* They won't attack us. Get a good night's sleep. I'm sure Alphys misses you already."

"* Right..." He thought he had persuaded her to relax. "* Wait up,buddy. If you don't think they're gonna pull something, why're you not sleeping?"

Crimey. She caught him. "* Yes..well you know..." No more weakness. Alone in his room, he had come to grips with his people needing a strong leader. Not a broken manlet that was buddies with those he commanded. There was being a friend to those around you and there was losing their respect. He pulled himself together and gave her a stern look. And sought to start speaking to her in a commanding tone. "* I will stand guard. Go. To. Bed."

And in one go, her resolve was broken. Her stance lost it's solidity and her spear vanished completely. "* Woah, sheesh I'm going, I'm going." And soon thereafter, she vanished behind the door. It had been a long time since he did this. Hundreds and hundreds of years. Standing guard in the night, in case wildlife, looters, or other dangers loomed in the night.

* * *

He wound around on the cold ground. The pieces of cloth he had laid out to make it softer didn't help at all. He looked over his shoulder. Gerson was in a deep sleep as if he was in his own bed in the castle at home. He wasn't even wearing his armor. Asgore looked around once more. The still river, and further away, the mountains to the west, the little forest to the north, everything was calm and the sky above was completely clear. But as he looked up the hill, he noticed Nef was lying pretty far down for someone who was standing guard. He had to make sure, so he pushed himself up, knocked off some dirt that had gathered on his robe, and walked up the hill, his paws shuddering when touching the cold, wet grass the first few times.

"* You're not falling asleep are you."

Nef was lying on his back atop the hill, with his head resting on his hands. He wore his green robe with the golden threads that adorned it sparkling in the light of the campfire downhill. A young wizard from the Mountain Court. And a self-proclaimed necromancer, the only of his kind, even though Master Herbel forbade him from practising it. He was sworn to protect the prince, and soon had become one of Asgore's best friends. "* Don't worry. I'm up." He was pretty confident, but sat up regardless. "* It's your turn soon anyway." The young shrieker, a bat-like monster looked back to him with a smile. "* Shouldn't you be gathering strength for when you're up?"

The prince shook his head. "* I can't sleep. Still worried about what the Viscount said."

His careless friend just laughed at that. "* You're worrying too much. The humans aren't going to turn on us, just because one lord is holding a grudge."

"* Yes, maybe. " Asgore took a deep breath before sitting down next to Nef. Maybe he was right. Maybe he was misjudging the situation and giving the Viscount too much credit. Maybe instead of focusing on his worries and fears, he should try focusing on their hopes and dreams. "* Nef."

"* Hm?" He turned to Asgore, only to see him staring into the stars of the night sky.

"* The sky is clear now. Probably won't be for long. What is your wish? What do you wish for? Or wish to do?" He heard Nef laugh.

"* You know that already."

"* Same as ever?"

Nef nodded. "* I want my Soul Burst Ritual to work. It's not just bogus, I know it. It can work if I just get it right somehow. I wish I could find out how to make it so the skeletons don't just melt after a while. I want to create one, at least one, perfect skeleton. With a solid body that isn't made of floating splinters, that talks, and thinks like us, that is capable of conscious use of magic and that can live as a monster as long as I can, maybe even as long as you."

"Heh, that would be fun. We could have human friends that stay with us forever. Even though first we would need more than one."

"* One?"

Asgore laughed in confusion over what he had just said "* No...Of course... I have no human friends. What in the world was I saying?"

* * *

He kept in mind, that it was always a bad idea for anyone to take up guard duty all for oneself. Respect for authority was important, but you always needed friends to lean on too. So he stayed on his post for as long as three hours, judging by the clock on the back wall, and then knocked on Undyne's door. Within seconds it was unlocked and opening. An austere looking fish lady stood behind the door, with her teeth hanging out. "* Yes?"

"* I've watched out for three hours. Do you want to pick up?"

She spoke in a collected fashion, but he could see there was a note of enthusiasm in how her eyes narrowed when she heard him ask to take over. "* None will pass."

She hasted past the door, the only other thing he could hear before it was shut, was Alphys mumbling "* Andaino-kun", before the door closed behind her.

* * *

He didn't trust his eyes during the entire ordeal. But probably, neither did anyone else who saw this. Still in wonder over what was happening, William hinged down the table from the seat in front of him and placed his notebook on it. They had just lifted off, so it was safe to assume the flight wouldn't be interrupted.

As it was booting, he raised his head to look above the seats, looking for gawkers. It was good that he almost sat in the very behind left corner of the economy class. Granted, his fellow MEPs never flew with anything less than premium class, but here he didn't have to fear more onlookers than the people sitting immediately next to him, and he usually didn't like the thought of unnecessarily riding the gravy train on other people's dime.

The Merkantilian Center for Information Acquisition had contacted him and a few others, to ask them to form a committee on a matter that was confusing to say the least. And of course he couldn't resist not only taking it but taking the first flight to the scene to try and get to work however necessary on what this was going to lead to. His work in the Kadmoan parliament was pointless. It could neither pass laws, nor propose, repeal or reject them. He was basically paid a fortune just for sitting around and listening to convoluted laws that most people neither knew nor understood, and none of them could influence in any way.

This was different. If he was lucky, he would finally get to give something back to society and do something actually meaningful. What he was given were video clips from cell phones collected probably without the knowledge of the owners of those cell phones. The video clips depicted, almost always looking through a window, a group of strange creatures, all of them roughly humanoid, the likes of which nobody had ever seen before, as far as he knew at least.

They were seven, but one of them looked like a human child - somewhere between eight and twelve years old and of far eastern descent. Two pairs of the remaining six seemed to resemble one another to a degree. One, without looking at them, was easy to mistake for an extremely pale child, but if you actually looked at it, from it's hands, it's 'neck', it seemed to be a walking skeleton. The smaller one's 'skull' didn't even look like an actual skull, more like a very pale face with a nose hole and eyesockets, except that the eyesockets had white 'pupils' shining from within. Not to mention that both of them could move their mouths organically and they would sometimes 'blink' the way you would expect to only see it happen with actual eyes. The safest bet was that this was what they were a normal life form that for some unknown reason had evolved to look like skeletons.

The small one was wearing an impossible outfit. They either had not the faintest means of perceiving aesthetics or simply didn't care. A blue hoodie over a white shirt, but short trousers and white slippers. The taller one seemed to be dressed as a medieval soldier of sorts, at least in part. A solid chestplate, with a long red scarf hanging from his neck, the chestplate and his belt lined with gold at certain points, blue underpants, red boots and red gloves.

Two others looked like they were a male and a female of the same species. One of them, presumably the female, wore a purple robe with a distinct crest that resembled the golden pieces of the other one's armor. She was holding the human child's hand at all times. She had something very short on her head, that guessing from what was in the same spot on the other one were horns, and a complete coat of white fur. Like her counterpart she walked along with bare feet, or rather bare paws, seeing as they looked more like the hindfeet of a rabbit than the hooves of a goat. Pointy claws protruded over their fingers where a human would have their fingernails. They also both seemed to have extensions to their upper mouths that resembled fangs, only that they were on the outside of their mouths, so they probably weren't actual teeth.

One video, shot through one window looking into another, also shows the human child sitting on the female's lap. Perhaps the female had adopted the child in some way.

Her counterpart was a mighty beast with arms and hands that looked like they could smash rocks bare-handedly, and he was taller than any human William believed to know. He must have been about ten feet tall, almost eleven if you included his fully grown horns. He was clad in a set of black-golden plate armor and wore a very long purple cape on his back. He too had white fur, but also blonde facial hair along with a 'mane' of sorts and a little crown on his head.

The remaining two looked very different from each other but wore modern clothing that could blend in with ordinary citizens of today if it weren't for their bodies. One was a blue woman in jeans and a tank top, deep red hair with a very narrow hairline, blue and red fins for ears, a yellow eye, and wearing an eyepatch over her left one. Whenever she talked or opened her mouth in some way, and sometimes even when she didn't an asymmetrical and insanely bitey set of teeth surfaced for anyone to see.

The other one was clearly overweight. A lizard or dinosaur of sorts, but walking on two legs, a few not-so-scary teeth hanging out of it's mouth, oversized round glasses and wrapped in a lab coat. The lizard was walking with bare feet like the 'goats' but seemed close with the blue woman.

When the computer was booted up, he opened up those clips to reassure him that the details he had noted down were not figments of his imagination. But they weren't. They were mostly videos shot from cell phones, so it was hard to make out at times. Good thing most people had one and enough from the comfort of their own homes were so curious as to shoot them.

The flight he was seated in was to Enkate City, an enormous city at the southern costal area of the continent. With farmlands, suburban areas, orc settlements, orc villages and empty landscapes stretching in all directions. Part of western Atelia, a seafaring nation that now only remained in the shadow of it's former world-encompassing empire. His actual journey led to Farfoot Village in the surrounding rural area. According to the material and information he was given, this was where all these videos were shot, and this was hopefully where he would find these creatures.

The person sitting next to him, a brown-haired teenager with a football shirt with, asked him out of the blue. "* Excuse me..uhm what is this?" He pointed at one of the clips William was watching.

He tried to play it down with fake laugh. "* Oh, that's just some videos from the internet." That did get rid of him in regards to asking questions but oh god the internet. In the age of information, there was no way the general public and with it, the press wouldn't catch wind of this within hours, if you looked in the right places within minutes even. He severely hoped that the questionable nature of how he acquired all this footage meant a sufficient head start when getting to them.

After going through each clip once, he decided he should put the remaining time to use. He had only had a few hours of sleep before he got the call, and chances were this would be a long day. He turned off his notebook, placed it back in his bag, and decided to try and get some sleep for the rest of the flight.

* * *

Covered in sweat, he woke up still with the memory in mind of being dragged into a chariot and flown away by his mother, forced to see his father killed at the hands of those he had spared. Of the scarred boy he had spared. The Orcs. He should have guessed this would happen. That the moment the monsters were banished, along with them were the whisperers, and without them, nothing was stopping the orcs from spreading and killing everyone in their path. It was a miracle that humanity held on as long as they did.

But they were known to him. He learned their spiel the hard way. Crocodile tears when vulnerable, ruthless murderers on the first opportunity. If they were here, he had to take his father's words to heart. To place his own people first and foremost, and not accept any plea or compromise on this priority. If this couldn't be resolved without a fight, not even Toriel was going to stop him. Cowardice was not just to crumble under fear and pressure, but also to dispense mercy where none was warranted.

But before any of that, he had to clean his coat. It was going to be a long day and who knew if he had to make a good impression today already. The rooms of this hotel, even the bathroom, were built to suit full-grown boss monsters, but the sink was built for humans. That was the case in most houses in the underground too of course, but seeing the contrast here was nonetheless interesting. He took off the rest of his clothes, wetted the washrag at the tap and ran it across his body, before putting his clothes and his armor back on.

In the hallway, Undyne and Alphys were waiting. When he greeted them, he could hear a voice from upstairs. "HE'S AWAKE NOW. LET'S GO!"

"* wait up!"

A very enthusiastic skeleton came practically hopping down the stairs with the smaller one nervously pacing after him. Toriel and the child followed, the child bearing a look of anticipation as they came down the stairs. Without a word, Asgore led the way back downstairs to the reception. It was the same young man from before, and he looked seriously exhausted. He must have stayed awake the entire night. "* Excuse me, do you also serve breakfast?"

Exhausted, but now less terrified, he stepped past the counter. "* Of course follow me." He led them to the dining room right past the reception. There were a few people seated who's attention was of course drawn at once, but their presence caused less of a commotion than Asgore had feared. Various types of bread, butter, marmelade, marmite and a few other spreads, milk, juice from several fruits, cereals and other usual breakfast dishes were laid out as a buffet to the left, right next to the kitchen. The page led the to a wide table, just big enough for each of them to have a seat.

"* Thank you. Everyone listen. Human food is heavy. Go very easy on it. Your metabolism needs a lot of time to adapt to it."

Papyrus looked concerned. "WHAT'S A METABOLISM?"

"* i'll explain later." Sans looked over to the rest. "* little trick. go for the milk. it has more magic, even up here."

Toriel faced him. "* How do you know that?"

"* i read stuff."

"JOKE BOOKS DON'T TEACH YOU ABOUT MILK, SANS."

"* take my word for it, bro."

Once they all had a plate with at least something small on it and a glass of milk for each one, they sat down and tried what they took. Except Alphys, who was just holding her croissant in place and inspected it from multiple sides. "* It'd probably be a good idea to keep probes and analyze the foods up here for magic percentages."

"* Get to eating, weeb."

"* O-okay."

"* Mom, can you even eat human food?" This question was going to come up.

Luckily, Sans picked this one up, sparking curiosity on how he was going to navigate around this one. "* hey kid. look. this is a human tomato, right?" He pointed at the tomato he had picked up on the buffet. He then foraged in his jacket pocket and pulled forth another tomato.

"DID YOU CARRY THAT WITH YOU THE WHOLE TIME?"

"* hey, a guy needs a healthy supplement from time to time."

"SUPPLEMENTING KETCHUP WITH TOMATOES."

He didn't even react to that. He just went on with his explanation to Frisk. "* that's an underground tomato." Next, he took each one in one hand. "* was the same thing on the surface, but we just selected and grew ours to have more magic. take 'em both. see? feel like they're the same weight." He took them back and started to strike out with one of them. "* but if ya throw them..."

"* No!" Everyone reached for his hand to stop him.

He raised his hands in defeat. "* just messin' around. anyways - if ya throw them, the underground one's gonna fly further. magic is subject to gravity, but the underground tomato still has less mass. and because they don't move on their own, it works that way."

A good dodge for the time being, but Asgore needed to add a little correction. "* It's not really that simple."

Sans didn't care. "* hey, it's a start."

They sat together in silence. But it was going to be a busy day, so Asgore tried to break the ice. "* Say, Toriel, what do you think, how should we start life on the surface?" She didn't even look back. Very well, he had to make plans on his own. He already had an inkling, but wanted to wait with sharing it until he had thought it through, to be safe when explaining it.

Before they were done though, he heard an agitated voice from outside, followed by a man in a grey suit with a red tie carrying a little bag on his left hand, hurrying straight to their table. "* Oh thank goodness, you're actually here." He caught his breath and shook everyone's hand. Even Frisk's. "* Greetings, I'm William Fenkel - Kadmoan Federation. I came here to establish contact with you, find out who you are and how I can help. "

Surprisingly fast. Asgore guessed that whatever rulers the locals had would be quick to send someone like him. He had to ask one thing though. "* Pleasure to meet you. Say, how did you know we were here so early?"

"* Everyone has a cell phone and the people here in the village were recording your every step. If you're done having breakfast I'd really ask you to come with me. The press could show up here any minute and it will be impossible to get anything done if they do."

* * *

"Now then, Papyrus. Little Sans knows all of this, so this is only for you. Monsters - for the most part - are made of magic. But not completely, and just magical energy alone is far from enough to nourish a monster. You shouldn't forget that monsters don't naturally live completely isolated from the surface. We're actually supposed to be on the surface, the same one with surface-dwellers, where we live a life together and eat the same foods. The same foods as other creatures that are made of magic to a lesser degree than ourselves. Which is why strictly speaking, we can process food just like any creature from the surface.

The difference is, that if we reduce the amount of matter we take in, we can avoid the less appetizing parts of our metabolism completely and don't need the suiting facilities. What monsters may have trouble with though, is easing themselves from a diet of specifically grown monster food onto a diet of food from the surface. If they overindulge in high-percentage-matter foods, while their bodies haven't gotten used to it yet, it causes a lot of health conditions that range from feeling and actually being more heavy all the way to life-threatening breakdowns. So in short, much like for any creature actually - eat responsibly."


	4. The Bane of foreign countries

The Monster King's Resolve Chapter 4: The Bane of Foreign Countries

* * *

"Merkantilia, the antithesis beyond the seas. A nation formed on an enormous continent on the other side of the western ocean. It used to be populated by tribes of desert goblins and a set of human tribes that soon became as savage as life there without proper human craftsmanship necessitated. A no-man's land, unreachable by non-human means that nobody would want a part in. Until Kadmoan humans landed and settled on it a few centuries ago. Under human guidance and control, it became a massive economic force with power and influence over the entire world.

The nation that prides itself with it's freedom and wealth. Soon and all of a sudden, people from all races across the planet clamored to get a share in what had been built there. And now call it their own as if they had helped build it. And there really was freedom and wealth. At least when it was a clearly human country. It's only in recent decades that you can barely say or do anything without repercussions, and the wealth really only stays with a miniscule minority that cries persecution whenever someone tries to change that. The Merkantilians claim they maintain peace and protect the world, but they're really just a bane to every foreign country."

* * *

"* Come with you where?"

"* Wherever you want, as long as you're moving." The human was in a hurry and visibly stressed.

"* Fine, as long as you're with us, I suppose we can talk somewhere else. But first..." Asgore gave the man his cell phone. "* I would like you to take a picture. This is our first breakfast on the surface after all." An invitation to see how the human would react. But he did as he was asked, took a picture and gave the phone back. He didn't exactly trust him, but if they could go wherever they wanted, it was going to be more difficult to lure them into an ambush if this person ended up showing untrustworthy colours. Everyone got up, but before they left, Asgore checked with the staff whether they were supposed to bring back the dishes themselves, but they weren't. He remembered one more thing though.

The page was still standing at the reception. He figured he was the only one currently willing to be around them, so he just stayed up as long as they were there. "* Excuse me, one more thing."

"* Yes?"

Before he asked it, he turned to the strange man that was picking them up and whispered. "* Say, what currency does the surface currently use anyway?"

"* Surface? You mean here? The Kadmo?" The man seemed rather perplexed about the question. Granted, for the people up here, it was probably something self-understanding. Like asking a monster in the underground whether magic exists.

"* And is gold still of value?"

"* Yes." Good, that meant one worry less for the time being.

He turned back to the page. "* At what point are guests expected to pay for the rooms?"

"* Usually when they check out."

"* And how long until that has to happen?"

"* Two weeks?"

"Golly good, one worry less." He then leaned his hand on the counter as far as he trusted it to hold, and smiled. "* By the way. We're going to stay away for quite a while. I think you should get some sleep."

"* Noted it, sir." The young man nodded and waved them good bye as he saw them depart.

Outside, the stranger paced ahead. "* I saw you walk through half the village twice, so I figured you don't have a car. Not that all of you would fit into one anyway. I also took your size into account and rented a minibus." Outside of the walls, not even on the area with the other cars stood a large cerulean chariot of similar fashion to the smaller ones on the plot on the inside of the hotel's outer walls. So this was a minibus. He had better remember this, these cars would never work for him, even the ones that had no hood. William walked up to it and pulled a wall to the side, revealing it to be a sliding door, which left enough space for Asgore to enter with ease. He couldn't stand though, and neither could he take the front seat.

While the rest got in, Undyne in the co-driver's seat, Alphys next to Asgore, and the rest behind them, he continued talking to the human. At least he was about to, but the human beat him to it. "* Put on the safety belts, they're at the side of your seats. You of course not, no need to worry." He was referring to Asgore.

"* Is the press' obstructing nature really such a problem that it warrants this?"

"* If only this were the extent of the problems." The doors were locked, whoever could sit on a seat were secured, and they left. The king asked the stranger to drive along the outside of the village's residential area. Preferably in a circle around it. "* So uh, I couldn't help notice that crown. Are you royalty or a noble of sorts?"

"* I suppose royalty would fit the description."

"* All right, very good, that means I've already found a person of authority. Am I wrong assuming there's more of you than you seven?"

"* To say the least, yes. There is a lot more than us."

"* Okay...maybe I should have started with this, what are you?"

"* Monsters."

"* All of you?"

Everyone answered this one. "* Yes!"

"* All right. The little one in the back, is he a monster too?"

Toriel reached over Frisk, as if she perceived a threat. "* Oh no, he is human. He fell into the underground."

The child spoke up himself. "* I'm with the monsters now."

"* He is my child now and you won't take him away." She sounded increasingly upset.

"* All right, all right. Geez."

They continued with him asking them questions in a similar, but less paranoid-sounding way than Howard had. He was trying to understand the basic things about the underground. Asgore was intently looking at the farmland around the residences of the village as they talked and he told this person the things he wanted to know. He was growing more confident by the minute. Maybe what he had was more than an inkling. It would require some research on the owners of the surrounding farmland.

For safety reasons he asked William to turn around and drive the same stretch along the outside road between the buildings and the farmland but in the opposite direction. This was time time to turn things around. "* Now then, you tell us about yourself. You said you came from the - what was it?"

"* Kadmoan federation. It's sort of a supernational governmental body funded by it's member states. I'm a representative there, but when you lot were spotted, I got called into a commmittee and appointed to find out more about you."

But when Asgore asked what 'representative' exactly meant, and was confronted with the concept of indirect democracy being an applied system instead of property-driven monarchies and oligarchies, something didn't quite feel right about it. "* This sounds rather vulnerable to foreign forces."

"* Yes, a lot of people in the population complain about that. The member states' voting populations are growing less and less content with the Federation by the year..." he continued with a lowered voice. "* ...so am I if I'm honest."

"* Then why work in it."

He laughed visibly hearing the question. "* Honestly, until you lot came, money. A single term is a lifelong payout. I can live luxuriously even if I never get elected again. And now that you're here and I'm working with you, I can finally do something important. I'm really looking forward to helping you lot."

"* While we're right there, tell me what is your estimation. If we were to want to move back to the surface. All of us. All monsters. If we wanted to accomplish this, how much resistance from the Federation would we meet?"

"* Probably none. At all. In fact this sounds exactly like what the powers that be would want."

"* Splendid. This is much better than anticipated."

"* If you're going to meet resistance, it's from the people themselves. The human people I mean." Oh no...

"* Are there more than human interests that are of import here?"

"* Well...this topic be better left untouched. At least for now. Oh damn, they're already here." This didn't sound very reassuring to Asgore.

He stopped, but not without good reason. Several cars were blocking the road, rows of humans in various kinds of business clothing, some in casual outdoor clothing were forming a crowd, pointing various kinds of cameras straight in the minibus' direction. He couldn't avoid it forever. And standing right here on a road with the golden fields of wheat in the summer sun in the background made for a good location to make a first impression on the human press.

"* Sir. Just one question."

"* Sir - what is your name?

"* Are you and the other goat a couple?"

"* Are those walking skeletons?"

"* What perfume does the blue lady use?"

Parts of the crowd went straight in his direction, flashlights went off, microphones were stretched in his direction. The representative was right, they were getting too obnoxious. "* Undyne!" She understood without a word. She left the car, formed a blue glowing spear in her hands and used it to push the curious mob to a certain minimal distance.

"* One at a time please." The king gestured the crowd to calm down, before he made sure he had the fields behind him to land in the shot of the cameras.

One man in his thirties stepped forward. "* Sir, could you introduce yourself?"

Once the crowd calmed down, he started. "* Howdy everyone. My name is Asgore Dreemurr. I am the Monster King, and we all come from the underground. This is the former captain of my Royal Guard, Undyne..." He pointed at the van. "* The one in blue is Sans the skeleton." This prompted Sans to leave the vehicle and wave at the cameras. In his usual calm and collected fashion of course. Asgore had to bite his lip not to name Toriel. With her no longer his Queen, there was no noteworthy title to address her by without risking her scorn. But he figured something out. "* The human child is Frisk, saviour of the monsters, and his guardian Toriel." He hoped the child enjoyed the attention. He really deserved it.

After that, he pointed to another very eager looking woman with a microphone to see her move forward and ask the next question. "* Are there more monsters and where do you come from? And what do you plan from here on in?"

"* A magical barrier had us sealed down there for hundreds of years and thanks to the child, we are now free to return to the surface." He turned around and started gesturing with an open hand, that what he was referring to clearly included the fields right behind him. "* As for what we plan on doing, if it's possible, I think we're gonna see if we can purchase some of the farmland right here, or somewhere else around the village. If the prices allow it of course, otherwise somewhere else, to build ourselves a little addition to the village's residences for some of the monster families to move to, maybe some more to sell or rent to humans that would want to settle there with us. From there who knows. All I want is my people to gradually return to the surface. And to accomplish this step by step."

Another one didn't seem capable of waiting and went on. "* You mentioned this barrier to be 'magical', could you explain what you mean by magic?"

"* I think wielding around magic right now would be a bit dangerous."

"NYEH HEH HEH." Papyrus seemed to have come forward and was now talking to the cameras. "FEAR NOT, HUMANS, FOR I - THE GREAT PAPYRUS - SHALL GIVE YOU A DEMONSTRATION."

Oh goodness, what if he hit one of the humans by accident..."* Papyrus, please not."

The overzealous skeleton raised a hand, and five bones grew out of the pavement without damaging it, rose into the air around him and started spinning wildly. "* woah woah woah watch where you're swinging those" Sans had followed him and jumped up to catch each bone with his bare hands before dropping them to the ground. "* you better let those guys keep a - radius - around you before you start juggling bones or balancing on a - trapezoid."

"SANS..." Papyrus knew what he was doing and was already furious.

"* just saying. if you were to scare them, and they think you're some sorta aboneination, our time up here would face some serious - temporal - limitations"

"SANS STOP!"

Asgore had to interrupt this before it got out of control. He pointed at a fourth reporter, who hopefully had a less precarious question. "* Do you already have a specific set of property in mind for your project?"

All right, home stretch. Once he wormed himself out of this one, he would just gather everyone back in the vehicle and leave. "* I am not sure yet, but don't worry, I already have a team of researchers looking into that. But with this, I will have to say my goodbyes for now. It was a pleasure to meet you all and I look forward to answering more questions another time." With that, he started walking back, pushing the skeletons along while Undyne came back by herself. "* Mr. Fenkel please take us away from here."

"* Where to?"

"* Anywhere."

Alphys was tipping on his back and then raising a finger. "* I'm sorry b-but we have a team of researchers?"

It was going to come up, but he was embarrassed to see it come up now already. He laughed. "* Good point, I was bluffing. Congragulations to your new Job, Dr. Alphys, you are now the leader of the new research team. You can use the lab for it until further notice."

Telling from the look on her face, she was unsure about what that meant as he was. "* Nice. Thank you...I guess. But research what exactly?"

Before answering that, he preferred to consult William. "* Mr. Fenkel."

"* Call me William."

"* William, what would we need for what I just described out there?"

"* The whole village thing? Let's see, that would be a pretty massive change to Farfoot village..."

"* Farfoot?"

"* The village we're in - this village. You'd need the property, then building permits, a lot of those, and you'd need to go to city hall and get the mayor to agree to changing the regulatory plan. And then when actually building it, if you include all the likely building materials, there's probably thousands of laws regulating each of the kinds of materials or methods you use that you need to abide as well - courtesy of the Federation. You're welcome." William's mouth was smiling as the king could see through one of the mirrors, but his eyes weren't.

"* This sounds extraordinarily convoluted. Is everything on the surface like that now?"

"* Yes."

He buried his face in his right palm. Oh goodness, how was he going to quickly navigate through that? In fact, if this really was the case, there was no way the humans could, there must have been some catch. "* How do you humans manage? If what you say is true, there is no way a single human can afford taking a single step out of their own house. Let alone get anywhere near building a house to stay out of."

"* It's corruption. Infinite laws regulate what you do, making it impossible to get anything done. If you know who to bribe though, things get a lot easier."

"* What kind of person would build a system that forces people to bribe? Is bribery normal among the humans of today?"

"* Wasn't it always?"

"* No. When I last was on the surface, bribery was practised only by short-lived traitors, high elves and the worst among criminals."

For some reason, without losing control of the vehicle, the man burst out in laughter. "*What an irony. You better not get caught saying that bit about elves in public." He was silent for a moment. "* No I'm serious. Never get caught saying that around other people. It can get you into serious trouble."

They kept continuing to aimlessly drive through the village. A bad feeling creeped up William's spine when he noticed the roads to the left and right were blocked by large black cars, at least one of which as far as he could see bore a very familiar blue seal with an eagle at it's top. "* Wrong continent...again...why?"

"* What?"

Eventually, another one drove right in their way, and in the mirror, he could see one come up from behind as well. They were trapped.

"* Deceiver, you were luring us into an ambush after all."

"* No, this wasn't me! Believe me!" He put his hands up in fear. Other than for the crowd before, he actually saw the scaled lady summon up this blue spear out of nowhere. In fact she had created a new one and was holding it's sharp end onto his neck in that very moment. However this magic of theirs worked, if it wasn't real before, it got real very, very quickly.

"* If ANYTHING bad happens I swear your neck is first!"

The rest of the cars were remaining idle but the doors of the one in front of them opened. Three agents emerged from it, two men with long-barrelled firearms standing at the sides, and one with curly hair in his early fourties just standing in front of the car with his hands lazily hanging from the pockets of his jeans. He didn't have any attention to give to what anyone else was doing. The blade at his throat was all that he could think of. "* No sudden movements.", the woman snarled. Never taking the blade off of him, she guided him past the co-driver's seat, out of the car, and never taking a finger off, very slowly moved in the direction of those agents.

Once they were in hearing range, the man at the center didn't even bother trying to come to shake their hands. It was the same voice and the same Merkantilian accent as on the phone last night. "* Mr. Fenkel. I'm Center for Information Acquisition." He smiled. "* I see you brought friends." Silence. On the part of everyone. Until they heard the mighty steps of the king pace past them, straight to the waiting man in the suit.

"* Asgore no! You're getting yourself killed!"

The man at the front stayed relaxed, unphased by who and what was approaching him. "* Or perhaps he's wondering why we would surround you, before simply gunning you down."

The king consciously maintained his composure. He didn't know who they were, but William clearly seemed to recognize them. And get nervous when he saw them. They didn't seem to strike him as people that were up to any good, and as long as he had any trust for William, he was inclined to think the same about them. "* If they wanted to attack us, they could have from a safe distance." What he did know though, was that they didn't intend to kill them. "* William, who are these people?"

"* Government agents. They work for the land overseas."

So that was what he meant by 'wrong continent'. These people weren't actually Kadmoans. "* What do you want?"

"* The Kadmoan comission has assembled to meet you. And we want to know what you told him." He gestured to William.

William's voice was very shaky due to his predicament. "* Not much more than they said on camera."

"* All right I'm gonna have to have that a bit more precise later on. Take your time, write reports." The agent pointed at Asgore. "* And you. Here's how this is gonna go. You're gonna follow us, we're gonna escort you to the airport. We got a jet waiting with enough space for a big guy like you."

Through her gritted teeth, Undyne kept threatening the representative. "* If I find out you were in on this somehow, you're gonna look like a pincussion." William himself didn't dare say a word.

Instead, the agent gestured her to calm down with an open hand. "* Relax, he had no idea we were coming." It did make her stop holding him hostage, but she faced him with a furious look and made a wordless 'I'll keep an eye on you' gesture.

For some unknown reason, by the time they all went back to the vehicle, Toriel had already left it and walked up to them half-way. They fired up the engine and started following the car ahead of them. But Asgore couldn't help but turn around and ask. "* Toriel, what was wrong?" She first tried to give him the silent treatment. When she noticed he wasn't going to just ignore this, she simply said that it was nothing.

He closed his eyes to think. The whole concept of organizing monster settlements was actually just a backup plan to throw in there, to distract from actually wanting to just open the entrance and let the monsters stream into freedom, but if the surface was as convoluted and dangerous as his recent impressions made it appear to be, maybe it shouldn't just stay a backup plan.

And in hindsight, when thinking about it, it had a plethora of horrible consequences for monsters and human alike. Letting his people just randomly stream out into the world unorganized, unconnected, en masse, with no homes set up for them to live in and build lives of their own, and no idea where and whether it was safe to be there in the first place, seemed like a recipe for complete disaster. The lie became the truth, and nobody was the wiser.

It took a long time to get where they were going. They spent an insane amount of time on roadways first moving past vast green landscapes closer to the city, and then turning off away from it again.

"* We're there." Frisk and Alphys seemed to recognize this airport first. There may be a plane that showed up in the hotlands a few years ago, but other than that, only the monsters that were really interested in things from the surface could have an idea what an airport looked like. The low and narrow tunnels connecting the far-away parts of the underground had no space for planes to fly through, so there wasn't much of a point to building one or looking into how to do so.

At the heart, it was a very wide building with glass walls, a part of the building extended above the entrance and was held up by pillars, between which countless people moved in and out, some turning around to look at the multitude of black cars passing them. They passed the actual entrance, and drove around the compound that was set around the already enormous complex, until they got to the side of the airstrips, where a gate opened up for them to pass.

They passed many lorries, huge vehicles with monocoloured containers placed on top of them, moveable ladders, and staff until they came by one specific plane that wasn't standing with it's entrance pointing to the complex. This was where the cars came to a stop, and so did they. One of those motorized ladders was bringing itself into position a little further to the front, while agents approached the minibus. The king figured it to be better to leave now than to be specifically asked.

The agent they were talking to before, went straight up to him anyway. It was very noisy, only shouting was audible outside. "* We're only gonna need you two." He pointed at him and William.

"* Do you mean the others are just going to wait here?"

"* Nah, we're having em driven back." He in no way trusted these people, but what was he going to do? Burn them alive in an open field full of witnesses? Start a war after all? They hadn't come this far just to go back on all this now. He did look back into the vehicle though.

"* Papyrus, do you wish to come along?"

"ME?" He was sweating and avoiding eye contact. "WHY? DO I HAVE TO?"

He couldn't help laughing. "* I thought you wanted to be the ambassador. Now is your opportunity." Now that it meant pressure and showing courage, it seemed the skeleton was getting cold feet. "* It's all right. You don't have to this first time. You can start with something easier later on."

After looking at him with uncertainty. "I WILL TRY."

"* No. Stay with the others, that's an order. In fact, I have a different task for you. Accompany Sans and watch over the others." He thought about asking Toriel, but before putting him through that again, he skipped that and asked Sans straight away. "* Sans. Hotels aren't for free, you hear? And the name isn't a coincidence. It might be of interest that it lives up to it."

He winked and made an affirmative hand gesture. "* gotcha."

By the time he closed the sliding door again, William stood next to him and one of the agents had gotten into the drivers' seat. The man with the curled hair addressed him before heading back to the plane. "* Just take 'em wherever they wanna go until you get new orders." From here on in he just had to have faith and trust in the child's determination. Beyond that, everything was open. He looked back at the two. The child with it's usual look and Toriel next to him. The look of care in her eyes that he missed so severely, and he would only see it when she was looking at the child from here on in. He moved on to the front of the plane. Any second he wasn't captivated by this was one second less fighting off the tears.

"* What do you think they exactly want?"

The representative seemed as confused as him from the looks of it. "* I'm not surprised that you do get contacted, but I have no idea why they're in such a hurry now. When I got contacted which led to the committee that had me look for you, I remember hearing his voice on the other end of the line. They didn't seem in this immediate of a hurry then, why now, I have no idea."

They were led up a mobile staircase in through the passenger's entrance. The plane was white and bore a logo at the side, that depicted crossing sabres and a plane soaring above them. Below, it read 'Sultanates' in dark orange letters. As the agent had alluded to, the interior was indeed wider and taller than Asgore feared, he barely had to duck to fit through at all. And not at all once he got into one of the spacious seats that the people inside were leading him to.


	5. Time, assert thyself

The Monster King's Resolve

Chapter 05

Time, Assert Thyself

* * *

"Now that we're done with the dangers of one-way time travel, on to the limitations of those dangers. So Alphys - towards the end of the first week on the surface, do you remember how I helped you build that tricycle and finish up with Mettaton's body?"

"Uh...yeah...why?"

"Because that actually never happened."

"What? B-but I re..."

"Well, I presume it was sort of retroactively 'happened' after all, but it never actually happened-happened. Okay look. Let's imagine a world where every village needs an undertaker to keep watch of the dead. Why, doesn't matter. Let's just assume that in that world, for whatever reason, it is necessary. Now let's assume that there is a village A in which in the years eighty to one hundred, the undertaker is a specific person. Let's call him Nigel. If we then went back in time and prevented Nigel from being born or removed him in some other way, does that mean that from year eighty to one hundred, village A has no undertaker?"

"it'd be someone else."

"Precisely! A complete lack of an undertaker in village A would be a self-correcting inconsistency that would - well - correct itself naturally. When a change is made that drastically alters the past and the present, the flow of time just reasserts itself to create an often very similar present from the point of the change onwards. Of course, if the surroundings were too strongly influenced by the element that is removed, then comparably little is changed by the reassertion of time.

Imagine it like this. Here we have a tissue and a needle. in the natural passing of time, the needle is below the tissue. Now we push the needle..through the tissue. And then straighten it out again. As you can see, since the needle wasn't very broad, most of the tissue is unaffected by it, and even what was affected, depending on the material, tends to move back to something extremely close to the unchanged form. Now if we do the same thing with a pair of scissors...you see a significantly wide cut. The influence of the scissors on the tissue's shape is so large, that it remains, even after removing the scissors.

This is a rough abstraction of how and how far time can reassert itself in spite of changes resulting from one-way time-travel."

* * *

As soon as she was told to, Alphys tried to zone out the king's chatting with the driver and focus on tapping into the humans' internet. She first started the application for the ease-of-access transformation. After a while of metal and plastic slide extending from slide, an entire keyboard, a bigger screen and a mouse folded themselves out of her cell phone. A feature she only ever built into her own phone. And showing it did draw attention, but from neither of the two, who's attention it was supposed to raise. "* Wow. Can you make mine do that too?" Frisk held up his own cell phone. Yes she could, but that would take time. Which she wanted to devote to other things right now.

The first steps were easy really. It wasn't like she didn't try before, but the barrier was blocking electronic communication with the surface as well. Now that the barrier wasn't there any more, there was nothing stopping her. All she needed to do, was to try out the names of the preset search engines the browsers had installed on the most recently thrown away tech she had found and salvaged, used that as a search engine to find other search engines to pick out the most commonly used ones and started looking up things from there.

One of the first things she found was HeadSheet, which was very obviously the surface's counterpart to Undernet. A widely-used all-in social media platform, but with extremely strong online participation by comparison. Undernet was a wasteland compared to this. She quickly made herself an e-mail address, and an account on it, but one clear difference was that it asked many personal questions, a lot of which she didn't yet have an answer for, and wouldn't want to care to give one.

She was anxious to see the humans react to their first monster sightings, and was soon 'recommended' an article from some news website that indeed commentated on footage that did look a lot like when Asgore met all those journalists. She was happy to see it from the get-go state it's conclusion, that the humans not only should be nice to the monsters, but that they were obliged to take them in. What she didn't like was how the author got to them. Allusions to wild stories of how the underground was ridden with poverty, how the people down there were suffering from starvation and were just looking for a place to live, and those were only some more outstanding assumptions that it made.

She had spent her entire life down there, and she was pretty damn sure that there certainly wasn't a lack of food to go around. And the people weren't really poor either. She figured it'd be best not to add a picture of herself and blend in. It was hard to believe that her name would instantly expose her. She wrote a comment to it, trying to take it easy but at the same time, correcting it. "* I'm not really sure. It didn't seem like they were starving or running away."

She was shown another one, that was the exact same but from another website. Pro-monster conclusion but a questionable way of getting there. "* 'are simply looking for a place where they don't need to fear for their lives every day' do you have a source on this?", she wrote. And this trend continued. Article after article the same thing. 'You must accept monsters' and 'Monsters are starving and dying'. She tried to add her correction onto each one, but it didn't seem like there would be a visible end to them. What was going on? Where were these assumptions coming from and why were all these sites repeating them in lockstep?

Maybe she was getting too worked up. The first few general messages were positive, maybe she was reading too much into this. What she couldn't resist at least looking up was Kenshi no Tsurugi. She wasn't sure if she should squeal in anticipation or cower in fear, as she saw there were five seasons of it. And that was only the anime.

Then something strange happened. Black cars with a logo she recognized from some human crime show or thriller movie were parked all around, and one was blocking the way. A very panic-inducing moment was when everyone realized that, Undyne was holding a spear to their new human friend and threatened him with a voice she seldom had heard. And never to her. But hearing it alone and the situation that unfolded, terrified her so much she couldn't help but hide behind her big, muscular king, bury her face in her palms and cower down to have as little of her as possible on display through the window.

Eventually, it was over and, albeit with a much more tense atmosphere, their journey continued. This time with a specific destination. She could get back to trying to find out whether these seasons were any good. When she tried to comment, asking if they're any good in comparison to the first two, she hit the 'post' button but nothing happened. She hit it again and again,which was difficult to do in quick succession when you had thick fingers and were working with a tiny touchscreen only. It wouldn't post it.

Upon reloading the page, she found to have been logged out. But trying to log in only brought her to a different page, that seemed to be apologizing to her, saying that her account had been terminated. There was a field for reasons to do so, but all it said was 'Inciting anger'. Anger? She could have sworn she wasn't sounding angry to anyone. Her bigger worry was that she'd accidentally type something that would reveal her to be a monster. She tried looking up the articles she commented on, but what she wrote was exactly what she remembered writing. No curses or insults or anything to that effect. But the second one had a reply. "* Back to uno with all of you." And the same person seemed to paste that into replies to a lot of other comments that were to a similar effect as hers. For one, those humans sure were pretty sensitive. And what was 'uno'? u no? You know? No she didn't know.

Well whatever it was, it was too late now. Her profile got deleted for all that mattered. She had something to do anyway. It took a few attempts to get that Farfoot village didn't count as a village or town of it's own, but as part of a pretty far away but neighbouring town. Which meant it didn't have a land registry of it's own either. She noted down the address when she found it.

The scary guys in the uniforms brought them to an airport, where Asgore and William left, and one of the men in uniforms got into the driver's seat. She was going to ask him if he could take them there, but she found out that visiting the office she was looking for required an appointment and it had to be several days in advance. In fact, why wait? She started the application that turned her phone back and dialed the number.

"* Troughton Land Registry, how can I help you?"

She was so nervous, what if she said anything wrong? What if she hesitated too long? Wait, she was hesitating in that very moment. "* Yeah, excuse me, is this where I can make an appointment to ask for the owners of some property in your area?"

It didn't sound like her fears were well-placed. "* Sure, you have some specifics in mind I can note down in advance?"

"* Yeah...Farfoot Village. Don't know exactly where, just all the farmland around it, I guess."

"* Okay, thank you, noted and what's the name?"

"* Alphys..."

"* Is there a family name?"

"* I...really don't want to. You'll recognize me, I promise. Just Alphys."

"* Just...Alphys. Okay, and when would you like your appointment."

"* Any time...as soon as possible. Where is your next opening in the schedule."

"* That would be Wednesday at 3PM in the afternoon." That was in two days time.

She laughed. But mostly out of sheer relief. "* Great. Thanks a lot."

"* It was a pleasure. Good bye."

"* See ya.", she answered melodiously before realising the woman on the other end had already hung up.

Before she could think about what to do next, there was something on her mind. "* Uh, Sans...what did his majesty mean?"

"* i'm gonna stop by the castle. pick something up."

"* The underground?" She paused. The underground. This was actually a good idea. She couldn't get the information Asgore needed her to get just yet, but maybe she could help another way.

Depending on how long they'd stay, maybe she could try and get in touch with the Builver Crew. There was no way that humans could build houses and pave the area anywhere near as fast as them with no magic to accelerate it. A house that humans built would take years to get done, they could finish within a few weeks without even using their full staff. They would remember her and Undyne. She needed her house rebuilt again anyways.

"* C-could I come along?" She was unsure how they all stood to her. Sure they got along, but every time she looked Sans in the eyes, she lost her confidence, something about him reminded her of the things she had done. The Amalgams...the flower...oh god what if he knew about the flower...

"* sure, why not?" Phew.

"* I wanna go to the underground too." It was Frisk.

Toriel spelled out exactly what Alphys and probably the others thought. "* Why on earth would you want to go back to that dark place?" She was stroking his head and used a turned his face to her with a single finger. She sounded like she wanted to persuade him, but from the lack of expression on his face, this didn't seem to work.

"* I've got someone to talk to too."

"* Didn't you say your goodbyes to everyone already?"

"* One wasn't ready to. Not yet. I've got to try again. Maybe I know what to say now. Or maybe they had time to think about it. But I've got to try." Toriel did ask him who and what this was about, but Frisk simply didn't respond. Everyone quickly realised this was a question he was determined not to answer.

"* Uhm...Mr. Driver sir uh...if I gave you an address, could you take us there?"

He didn't even look back. "* Until further notice, wherever you want." Alphys was happy to see one of the search engines had a map application that allowed to look at the surrounding landscape from above. With the names she had memorized by now, finding an area near the palace wasn't hard at all. Once they'd arrive back in the underground, there would be more of an opportunity to make sense of all this. Maybe, if there was enough time, she could rewire and reprogram some of her mobile cameras to monitor parts of the local surface.

Later on, Undyne pulled out her phone and dialed a number. When she said that Asgore wasn't picking up, the driver told her that you couldn't use cell phones in a plane. They were cut off from him for as long as this flight took.

Most of the time they were all silent. Sometimes thinking about where Asgore was and what he was doing, sometimes just being uncomfortable because of how their drivers were switched out and what generally had been happening in the last few hours. At some point in-between, when the driver was off paying for refueling at a gas station, a solid feeling hand tipped on Alphys' left shoulder. "* hey. when we're there, before we split up and all, could ya talk to me real quick? i think with all these roadways i'm gonna need a little help with something."

"* Uh..okay?"

Alphys made herself a new profile on this HeadSheet platform, but this time, she kept her mouth shut. She only followed sites and profiles to see if she could out together a kind of news feed on surface politics and some fansites of her currently watched anime. She also took the rest of the trip to see the other social media websites the humans had and used, all of them high usage and all at the same time. For all these websites to have that much activity, the humans must have been spending a lot of time with this.

Rollr, a blogging site that was merely used as a semi-social media website and the more conspicuous people on it seemed very angry for reasons laid out with strange words she had never heard before, Robit, a very obscure site with masses over masses of segregated forums, Chirper, something for people who spoke in very short sentences, but for some reason, every other website linked to it and OurPipe, a website made for uploading videos only.

She didn't have time to have a look around what they all were about, and in the time she had, she didn't find this 'uno' thing someone mentioned earlier. On the other hand, she didn't bother to ask for fear of getting banned again. In fact, in everything she set up, she only followed people and decided not to write anything at all, just in case.

At some point, they did recognize the scenery and asked the man to stop. When they all got out to slowly and carfully walk the road back that they had come across last evening, they were surprised to discover the man didn't actually follow them. But at least most of them figured sooner or later they'd find the location of the entrance anyway.

Sans grabbed her wrist and stood still. "* Hey! What's keeping you two?" Undyne noticed Alphys falling back instantly.

Sans closed his eyes and laughed it off. "* no worries, we just got a little formality to discuss."

"* It's okay, Undyne." She threw a questioning look at them before shrugging it off and walking along with the others.

"* so. alphys."

She felt very uncomfortable. "* Yeah?"

"* i need a little favour from you. i already got an idea how to convince pap to get himself a driver's license, but i can't always rely on him to drive me around, right? nevermind, i need to get around and i've gotta be able to be seen gettin' around. and this is my size, i'm not growing. so these human cars aren't gonna do it for me."

"* You're saying you want -what? A Sans-mobile?"

"* nah a tricycle would be nice, but they're for kids. i doubt they're stable enough."

"* What do you mean?"

"* stable enough to drive fast."

"* ...how fast are we talking?"

Sans gestured that he was only guessing. "* around one and a half at least"

"* ...metres per second?"

"* ...hundred miles per hour."

She shrieked a few steps away from him. "* What? Wha...why..." She hyperventilated for a few seconds, but soon pulled herself back together to ask the obvious question. "* Can you even move that fast? You need a motor? And extra weights? Enhanced traction?"

"* nah, nah once i'm back in shape, i can manage, but i'm not sure any store here has what i need."

She was sweating from thinking about him pedaling so fast, that he could shake full-on sports cars. If he could pedal so fast, how fast could he run? "* Yeah...no kidding." She went through all the necessary factors that weight into that, stability, the vectors of forces at play when riding a tricycle over a street,the heat resulting from the friction. "* B-but..this is impossible...how am I...?"

He just patted her on the head and laughed. "* chill, take some time, wrap your head around it, look for some ideas how to do it. take your time, as long as the speed thing and the tricycle thing stays our little secret. after all..."

She turned back to him. His pupils had faded out in a harrowing, and he spoke for one sentence - one - in a tone she couldn't describe. "* I know a secret you haven't told them." A cold shiver ran down her spine. She figured what secret he was referring to, she only wasn't sure how he knew. She moved another step away from him, but before she knew what was going on, it was already over.

Sans was back to normal. Lazily put his hands together behind his head as if nothing had happened. "* hehe, the others are pretty far ahead now. better catch up."

How did he know? He must have been in the true laboratory. Read the entries, seen the flowers. She remembered back when she became the royal scientist. She spent her life beforehand restoring and salvaging human technology. That was how she trained herself in figuring out all the nitty bitty grits of electronics, machinery and engineering in general. His majesty called for all potential replacements to come to the castle and present what they had to show. Winning this little contest was easy, since Mettaton was already built. But the reason it even happened, was that the royal scientist had quit. After almost a hundred years of work, he apparently lost most of his memory and had delusions about someone else being the royal scientist. Not long after that, Sans simply quit and left. Did he know some secret way into the true lab?

It felt weird going back. You could see from the view on the cliff that it was already late afternoon. Only a few hours and it would be evening like it was yesterday when they were exactly here, leaving for the first time.


	6. Elfengold

The Monster King's Resolve

Chapter 06

Elfengold

* * *

"When we were all on the surface, I wanted to become an inventor. I wanted to put the knowledge I was given to use, to bring more wealth to our Queen's Mountain Kingdom. You know that early printing machine? The Gutenberg Printing Machine? Well it was supposed to be called the Gaster Printing Machine, but my assistant patented it to his name behind my back, the moment I had it completed. In hindsight, getting betrayed serves me just right for trusting an Elf.

High Elves. Roughly human size, but a little more frail in body and of course, with their visible mark - the curved, pointy ears. They're polite, they're friendly, they're generally golly good to be around. At least when you're talking to them. The moment you look away, what they do then reveals their hostility to you. They evolved from Sand Elves roughly three thousand years ago, but moved to the east to get to this continent.

By interbreeding with humans, they acquired human intellect and the beige-pinkish skin-tone that they now share with humans, but they kept the ears and their two-faced malice. The humans just call them Elves, because they genuinely believe what they read without thinking and are now convinced that all of the Southern Wilds have always been the Orc Lands and that Sand Elves from the northern coastal deserts of their continent were just a mythical creature that never existed. Kind of what they thought about us if you think about it."

* * *

The path up to the cliff was downright trampled, as if masses and masses of people had walked it up and down in the one day they were gone. What was really surprising, was that there were humans at the entrance. But not these guys in suits from before, they looked like normal people from the village, and each of them was with there with a child. One of them had a notebook and they seemed to be busy talking to the monsters that were stuffing everything all the way to the entrance, when getting closer, they could hear them answering various questions to them.

The entrance was crowded, the inner cliff was crowded, the palace was crowded, as they'd find out later eeven Asgore's home was brimming with all kinds of monsters. Every single monster from the immediate path between the ruins of Home and the castle of New Home was here. In hopes of finding that this had some central cause, they pushed themselves past the outter crowd, but everything was just so completely packed. To make it worse, the monsters turned to Undyne and the others overrunning them with all the problems they had to lament.

"* What do we do? I've already packed everything?"

"* The humans say we can't build out there."

"* h0i!"

"* No-one's accepting my money."

"* There's no ocean in sight. We can't get Onion-san out there!"

"* I'm so dry..."

Ahead of the others, Undyne and Alphys found themselves pushing through the crowd together, until they ended up giving up and standing in the centre of the throne room. This chaos wasn't gonna resolve itself on it's own. Undyne knew that she had to step in. "* All right, listen up everyone.."

"* This was a mistake, I shouldn'ta closed up shop."

"* Arf, arf."

"* They wouldn't want you around anyway."

"* The guys up there are way too old..."

"* TeH hUmanz tek tEm ctay."

"* Screw you, Jerry!"

This didn't have some central cause, it was just all the things they had found out about the surface with Asgore as well. And probably a lot more things. Undyne tried to draw their attention. Nicely at first. "* Calm down, guys. Calm..." She didn't have a lot of patience. "* EVERYONE SHUT UP!" This scream halled through the room, and was probably echoing all the way to the other side of the golden hall. At once, there was silence. "* Thanks." She needed to rally them together with a speech. And Asgore wasn't here to do it. She didn't know if his ex was, and frankly she didn't care. She had to think of the words on the fly, so she consciously took pauses between sentences to think through each sentence before starting it.

"* I know you're all pretty confused and so were we. The surface isn't quite what a lot of us made it out to be, I get that. It's all gotten really strange and hard to wrap your head around. We don't know that there's enough empty houses to take in a lot or even any of us, and there probably aren't. And humans have this weird thing now where you need all sorts of preparation before you can start to build something. There's laws for everything and every patch of land out there belongs to someone.

The humans are scared of us and others coming to their homelands for a lotta reasons and who knows, maybe they're right to be. There's some really dark and scary stuff going on out there from the sounds of it, but that doesn't mean you should panic or give up. It's the opposite. Our king - right now - has left to talk to the highest ranking leaders we could find in our time up there. The humans are skeptical of us and who can blame them? They don't know us, they don't know what kinda people we are and what we're up to. However his negotiations go, if you - no, we - panic now and give them the impression that we really are dangerous, it will go bad for him.

Our king has placed his faith in us - in each and every one of you - to remain calm and collected and to show the humans your best side. To show them that you can adapt to their laws and their customs, even if this means taking your time doing so. To show them that our presence doesn't mean immediate conflict. Maybe even to show them that you have something you can bring to the table that they would want or like. He could have just taken one soul, gone to that village, been predictably attacked, slaughtered them all and taken their souls to remove the barrier, just like SOMEONE wanted him to. He could have taken the easy route and released us into an all-out war with humanity, but he didn't. He gave up everything. His marriage, his thirst for revenge, his kindhearted nature, only so that you - so that we - had the best hopes of a life on the surface. And now he needs you to help him!"

Someone from within the crowd interrupted her. "* But we packed up and everything."

This was the point where Asgore would put his foot down and assert leadership. But Asgore wasn't here right now. She really hoped he was fine. "* So what? Your houses, your buildings, apartments and caves, all of your homes down here are still there, aren't they? Except mine, but I'm not complaining." She realized she was drifting off, laughing at how dumb it was when she burnt it down. Not what this crowd needed at the moment.

"* I know that salvation is so close, so painfully close. It's gotta be a pain for all of you just as it is for me, to resist rushing out there and doing something hasty. But that doesn't mean we should start making stupid mistakes now that we're so close to the end goal...wait a sec. Alphys."

Alphys had only been cowering next to her. But now she needed some input from her. "* Yeah?"

"* You got an idea how long the whole preparing to build thing take? Two days?"

"* I don't know...two days is only to find out who the property belongs to. If the guy earlier today is right and we need to find the right person for the permits, who knows how long that takes."

"* Hm...the guy that left with Asgore...what's his name?"

"* William?"

"* Yeah, he sounded kinda like he had an idea where to get this other stuff done. All right. Okay Listen guys. If we get a hold of our king any time soon, if all goes perfectly, in three days time, maybe a week we might be able to start building. Maybe, maybe a bit later, but how soon depends on each and every one of you. Our return to the surface may be so close we can actually already go out and see the sun and nothing is stopping you from doing that on your time, but that doesn't mean we don't still have some stretch ahead of us. It will take a little more time, and it will take hard work, but we can do it. Anyone can do their part to ensure we get to move out as soon as possible...wait." She turned back to Alphys again. "* You were spending a lotta time with your phone-computer-thing. Did you manage to get on the human internet?"

The cute lizard blushed. She probably thought Undyne hadn't been watching her throughout the trip. And it looked like she got where she was going without a word. "* Yeah, that part's easy, but I'm pretty sure what I did isn't legal. I use connections you're supposed to pay for and don't. I-t's going to draw attention if too many connect at once."

"* Then we're gonna do something in-between. The five of you..."

"* We can make it ten..."

"* Ten of you that feel the most confident with looking stuff up online. C'mon, it's not like we didn't have an internet of our own before, it's probably quite..." She looked back down, because Alphys was vehemently gesturing her not to go that far, before whispering a correction into her ear. "* okay...it's similar but a lot more complicated. As I said, the most confident with that. Whoever is or ever was part of a building crew, keep your materials and non-magic equipment ready to use at any time.

And everyone else do what you can to prepare presenting to the humans whatever it is that might make them like you. If you make food, stock up on it and make it good. If you like entertaining, prepare your best shows. If you make furniture, stack up on high quality furniture. Same for everyone else. Make sure that you're ready to do whatever it is you do best, and that you're ready to show 'em that we aren't just tolerable, but that we're awesome and that they want us around them." Ending her speech with a raised fist, she had finally rallied them far enough to get an applause and see them gradually flood back. When the skeletons, Asgore's ex and Frisk finally followed, the area behind them was already emptying out and so was the throne room.

Papyrus clapped all the way to them with tears in his eyes. "WONDERFUL. SO MOVING."

"* all right buddy you can turn it down again."

"* Excuse me." Apart from ten of the monsters that left, the three adult humans that were standing outside before didn't leave but followed them. "* Are you 'Toriel' and 'Frisk'?"

Toriel did turn around to them. Frisk stayed silent as usual. "* Greetings, who is asking?"

They were two men and a woman, who gave each other a questioning look, before going on. "* It's our children." He pointed at the children that had walked to Frisk to talk to him. "* All three told us the same thing yesterday. They asked us to look for the big fluffy woman that's walking together with a human child. They even all knew your names. We thought they were playing a prank on us, until we saw you for the first time ourselves." Toriel looked away in embarrassment when she heard this description.

What followed was that the parents gave Toriel their phone numbers, which Toriel then tried to call. "* W-wait!" When Alphys noticed what was happening, she stumbled in their direction. "* This isn't going to work, our phone net isn't set up to connect to the human one yet. Just save their numbers."

While they were moving on to exchanging addresses and hospital names, Undyne called the volunteers together. Among others, there were a bunny, the librarian, a Temmie - whatever she thought this was about - and Chilldrake. "* All right, so here's the plan. Alphys is gonna do the nerd thing to put you guys through to the human internet. What you're interested in is the law. So whatever government agencies, counseling firms, online law books, anything you find is good. The closer and the more available, the better."

"* welp, that's one bummer. pity i'm gonna have to deliver the news." Sans came back into the throne room but from the other side.

Bad news? "* What bad news?"

"* wha...oh not to you, nothing to worry." he scratched the back of his head and then headed back deeper into the castle.

"WAIT UP! WHAT ARE YOU..." By the time Papyrus had followed him to the exit, judging from his reaction it seemed Sans had disappeared. "...UP TO?" The moment he had come back to Undyne, Sans was walking up next to him.

"* stuff."

"WHAT STUFF?"

Sans was walking straight across the flowerbed, carrying a solid gold bar in his hands. "* just a little drop-off, don't come lookin'. i'll be right back. gotcha?"

"DON'T 'GOTCHA' ME, SANS. WHAT'S UP?"

"* just stay right here and you're..." he lifted the bar in his direction before leaving for the surface with a wide smile. "* ...golden"

By the time Papyrus came back, once again furious over Sans simply vanishing, Undyne figured it was time. Maybe, if she was lucky, the amplifiers in the underground were strong and close enough to reach Asgore. She dialed his phone, and this time it actually rang. The sound was strongly distorted, but she could still make out the words for as long as the call lasted. "* Howdy. I'm fine thanks for calling but this is a bad time right now. I'm going to call you back." And that was how long it lasted.

* * *

When he exited the airport, William paced ahead and spread his arms to present him with a skyline with much, much more skyscrapers than Enkate City in the distance had, a white pinnacle that pointed all the way to the sky, and a lot tall and wide old-looking but obviously restored buildings. "* Welcome to Flemia, grand capital of the Kadmoan Federation. Watch out not to get your feet hurt, these big, international cities are extremely dirty." Two officers approached them directly from two sides.

"* Please follow, your highness. We have an appropriate vehicle waiting." What they were leading him to, was kind of like a minibus, but bigger in all directions, making it so wide it only just remained on it's side of the road. It had a white, less decorum-weighted outer design, extremely thick doors and walls and the ceiling reached very high. In the part he was guided to enter over it's extendable steps, there were a few chairs and a table, but even to sit on one of the chairs he had to move it quite a bit away from the table, and his horns weren't very far away from the ceiling even then.

He had a flight that was over an hour long, listening to William's endless ramblings, describing all the dubious political machinations, most of which didn't really amount to anything when you really thought through the results they could bring. He had to relax, gather some strength so he wouldn't make a mistake when he faced this commission.

He was about to start again, when Asgore was saved by the familiar ringtone of his cellphone. It was Undyne. He didn't want to face her with nothing to show. Besides, he wanted the remaining time he had to get some rest. He told her that he was fine and made an excuse. Once he knew what this was about, he told himself, he would call her. When his companion was about to resume, this time, he just asked him to stop. He needed the rest and closed his eyes for a bit.

Once he was told that they were arriving, what he saw towering before him was a complex even bigger than this capital's airport. Three giant wings joined together in a glass-covered cluster, the cluster alone had the combined size of several of the skyscrapers they had passed. If he understood correctly, this government over governments, answered to no-one but their parties' donors and didn't own the properties they ruled over, giving them no incentive to care for their upkeep or the people that populated them. Despite that, they granted themselves a palace that would humble even the most despotic of kings that he remembered from his youth on the surface. He didn't like what these humans had become. Humans, as he knew them, would instantly see the negative consequences of something like that from far away.

There were more uniforms talking to each other via microphones 'securing' every step of his way from outside of the vehicle all the way until he entered the building. From there, he walked through an endless hallway. Only far, far in the distance could he see the elevator he was led to. To the left and right of him were offices behind glass walls. Some had automatic sliding doors, some normal doors with handles. In most of them, there were people in suits sitting at their tables, talking on a telephone or working on a computer. On his entire path and even to both sides of the elevator stood guards. As usual the guards were neither clad in armor, nor did they bear swords, axes or spears. They were only wearing suits and cloth uniforms and made up for the lack of protection with firearms attached to their sides.

To his surprise, he and William both fit into the elevator together. The pomp of these people truly extended to every detail. From the sheer height that stretched far enough for him not to touch the top, even when standing on the front of his paws. The walls and even the railings were covered in clean and shiny mirrors and the centre piece of the floor was actually golden on it's surface.

Outside of the elevator, he could feel the cold, smooth tiles on his paws. The representative's steps echoed through the halls as they went for the wide staircases at the outer corners of this floor. The staircase, pointed inwards, led to the bottom area of a huge hall with rows of fixed seats and a range of tables forming a barely bent arc that faced a set of podiums with varying height that were lined up along the wall on the other side. At the centre of that wall was one more staircase that led even higher up.

From that staircase descended about two dozen men and women of different appearances, all of them wearing suits in different tones between black and grey. Some of them carried documents of some sort with them. The door that Asgore and William had entered through, was one of four entrances, two pointing upwards to reach the lower side of the hall, one of which they had entered through, and two at the top pointing downwards, probably leading back down through some detour and there were guards at each and every one.

While the people were taking position, each on one of the podiums, Asgore and William awkwardly walked forward to view the commission directly from it's centre, just in front of the first slightly higher front row of tables situated around the wall and sat on the chairs in front of one of the few tables that could actually be moved for Asgore to still fit in with his armor. Eventually, they were all standing in place. The one in the centre turned on his microphone and spoke. His voice came out of loudspeakers with a volume at which you could probably still clearly understand it all the way at the top. "* Greetings and welcome Mr...Asgore Dreemurr, the Monster King and Mr. William Fenkel from the Kadmoan committee for inclusion and integration of monsters."

He responded, talking into the microphone on the table. "* Greetings, Kadmoan Comission."

"* Please summarize your situation and request in a few short sentences."

"* Like humans, we lived on the surface for as long as we existed. We were banished to the underground with a powerful spell that now finally has been broken. We want to return to the surface and live with you humans, but we are largely unprepared for what the surface has become. To purchase land to build on, we need money of a currency we encountered for the first time a day ago. I hear of thousands of laws, impossible to see through. We need information and currency if we wish to move here. And we are determined to move here."

The leader of the commission seemingly turned off his microphone and started discussing it with the other commissioners. They took a while, but eventually he turned his microphone back on and, in his usual calm fashion, went on. "* Are you in danger in the 'Underground'?"

He was startled by this. How was he going to answer this? Where would he start? At the danger of their populations having a growing risk of instability every time their hopes of leaving the Underground are shattered? Would he start at how a monster's body worked and how their life force was affected by the presence of humans? The inevitable depression that was waiting for everyone that would spend their entire lives not seeing sunlight a single time? "* ...Ugh...no, but..."

"* Are you at war?" He wasn't even given an opportunity to answer. "* Are you persecuted in your home? Perhaps do you lack fertile ground? Are you starving? Is your existence genuinely in danger in any way? Because I'm not sure if you are aware, but we already have a steady stream of people from the Orc Lands. If we start taking in and providing food and shelter for waves from a second source, our social system will..."

"* My, my, my, dear Gentlemen. Such schlocky hosts. Haven't you read the news? Of course they're suffering from poverty and starvation." They were? He was their king and he was hearing this for the first time. "* Any moderately educated person that reads up on current events would know that." A tall and slender man with a melodious voice, roughly in his fourties but healthy-looking for his age, descended the steps at the side of the outer rows. With his left hand, he was holding a light blue suitcase. With his right, he was speaking into his phone, which was for some reason linked to the same loudspeaker the main commissioner was talking through.

He wore a dark blue suit over a snow white shirt with a shiny purple tie on top. His blonde hair was cut short and orderly. At the sides of his head were ears so long their pointy ends reached all the way to the back of his head. His face bore a smug and amused expression and there was something extremely relaxed about the light-footed way he was walking down the stairs. "* Have you no shame and lost all your humanity, not to show empathy for these poor creatures. They're just looking for a nice place to live in peace. With the possibility to look up and see the sun, opportunities to work and contribute to a society bigger than their own and to reap the fruits of their labour in a manner that they deserve. What kind of inconsiderate sociopath would deny this to someone?"

All the commissioners, that were calm and collected and in Asgore's eyes, talking down to him until now, were suddenly extremely nervous, the moment the strange elf's voice was first heard. "* B-but Sir, even the real estate expansion programs that are running now aren't going to make up for the demand as it is. And the labour mar..."

The elf had raised his finger and placed it on his own mouth. "* Shush. Where there's a will, there's a way. Why would we pass up a perfectly fine opportunity to bring more variety into our society? Non-humans like him..." He had arrived at the two of them and was tapping the left side of Asgore's back with his open hand. "* ...are the future of Kadmoa."

He wasn't sure about all of them, but he could have sworn he could see a few of the people at the front trembling. With a shaky voice, the main commissioner eventually answered: "* Of course, we will prepare another summit to put together the necessary policies at once." They all picked up whatever papers they had put down in front of them and paced straight back up the stairs. "* So. I believe we haven't been introduced yet." He walked a few steps to stand in front of Asgore and put away his phone.

He reached out to get Asgore to hesitantly shake his hand. "* Asgore Dreemurr, Mr..."

Upon hearing the confused Boss Monster ask for a name, the man waved that off. "* Please, no surnames. I'm Andrew."

"* In this case, Andrew, you have my thanks for helping me convince this commission."

"* No need to thank me." Ever since he put away his phone, he was accompanying everything he said with suiting hand gestures. And nonstop. "* It is an obligation of the fortunate to help those in need. But enough of the courtesies. While our federal friends up there discuss how to help and accommodate you monsters up here, we can talk about more immediate steps. I've seen your little appearance in the countryside. Most amusing. And positively surprising. Wanting to work and build your own homes? Coming here out of your own impulse? I wish certain others were as easy to persuade."

"* Is it possible? Expanding a village to build a settlement for a few of my people? At least the really eager..."

"* Shush. As I said before. Where there's a will, there's a way. And..wait before we get to that, the name of the village, and preferably the county or town it's within, could you spell it out for me again?"

William had been silent until then, but he seemed almost as tense as the commissioners and was looking at Asgore with a just as tense expression on his face. Now he spoke up. "* It's Farfoot Village. Troughton is the town and it's in the vicinity of Enkate City."

The elf pointed a finger at the representative with an very wide smile and wide open eyes. "* Thank you. You see, Monster King? Humans can be good for something after all. All they need is a little incentive." He placed the case on the floor and picked his phone back up to note down the names William listed. "* ...Enkate City...okay. Now this is what I wanted to talk about." He put the phone away again and placed the case on the table. "* Within this case you will find all the paperwork necessary to transfer a prepared sum of money for you monsters to allocate - at your leisure and with no strings attached - no debt, no interest, no repayment - to a bank account of your choice. Of course I'd prefer it if you invested it into housing and preparing careers. You know, proper preparation for good jobs costs a lot of money, even here. Being able to afford property and building materials for a village is going to be the least of your worries with this kind of money."

This was all a bit much at once. "* I don't know what to say..."

"* Then don't say anything at all. Just take it and use it as best you can. Wasn't this what you came here for? You were looking for help, and Ma-Congragulations, you found yourself a benefactor."

"* This is astounding. If I can now convince the owners of that land to se..."

"* Way ahead. You won't need to worry the slightest. Just trust in the people of the countries around you and go through the official channels and regular customs. Everything will fall into place perfectly. We can all get along just fine." He was already backing off, walking towards one of the lower exits.

Walking straight past him was the familar face of that casually clothed agent from earlier, the one that first confronted them. "* Wow, already making friends with the really big names, huh? Hello?"

Asgore was still standing in place. He wasn't sure whether this really happened or not, but the suitcase was still there, and upon opening it, there really were just sheets of paper in small folders inside. The man asked again. "* You there?"

"* Yes yes. I'm just still kind of..."

"* At least you can talk. Now come along, we did you a favor, now you do us one."

He packed it up, but he still questioned the agent. "* You didn't give me much of a choice, how was that a favour?"

He didn't seem to care about the whole lack-of-choice component they had added at all. "* Hey, you wanted to talk to the commission or not? Besides, you think the government overseas has nothing better to do than chauffeur Kadmoan guests around? C'mon, of course there was something else."


	7. A friend in need of SAVEing

The Monster King's Resolve

Chapter 07

A friend in need of SAVEing

* * *

"Does any of you ever have the feeling you're not alone? That there is someone watching you or listening, even though there's no-one there? Sometimes you catch yourself telling to them your thoughts, and explaining to them what you're doing."

"NEVER."

"occasionally."

"Yeah."

"Well, most of the time, that's completely harmless. No reason to worry whatsoever. Now, onwards. The true reason why the Orcs spread across the entirety of the Southern Wilds and not just the immediate area around their original homelands is actually not that Asgore freed them. Under normal circumstances, they would have been reeled back in and reduced to a population that doesn't exceed the original Orc lands after roughly two generations. It's actually, because when the Underground was created and monsters from all around the world were warped into it, so was the Orcs' natural predator. The whisper...the whi - blimey, I just can't get the eyes right. Ah now, the Whisperers!

The Whisperers are telepathic monsters, who's telepathy only extends to the creatures they've evolved from. They also retained some other abilities from their origins while they gained some additional magic ones. They are very fast and extremely talented at assessing a person's field of view and reading their movement. You cannot see a Whisperer unless they expressly want you to. And yes, even if you were aware that they are there, it's impossible to see them, they just dodge your eyesi..."

"you sure?"

"You can't factor in the power converter, that's not fair."

"okay."

"They can dodge your eyesight with complete ease and even do that with multiple people at the same time. And if they're not wearing shoes that make it impossible to be completely silent, you can't hear them either. You could spend an entire day with a Whisperer, and you wouldn't even notice."

* * *

While his Mom was busy exchanging contacts with the three grown-up strangers, he found himself surrounded by their children. Two boys and a girl. They were carrying familiar items on them, which seemed a bit impractical to just wear wherever they went like that. And they were looking at him with enthusiasm. "* So? You know who we are, right? It's me, Rick!", the one to his right asked while putting his hands together with his pink gloves on.

The one to his left adjusted his glasses. "* Telling him your name is pointless, he probably never found out what we're called. You might as well just call yourself 'orange'. Maybe this will help." He took out a pen and wrote the word 'Hope' on the front page of his notebook to show that to Frisk, while the other boy gave him a thumbs up. After a few seconds, they both turned to the girl with an annoyed look on their faces. "* You were supposed to bring an egg..."

She just blushed and put her arms behind her back. "* Sorry, I forgot. Frisk, just imagine I showed you an egg." Was it really them? The human souls? This didn't make sense.

"* I think he's getting it. Yes! It's us. We helped you beat Flowey. And we were there every time you reached the end."

The obvious question just burst out of him involuntarily. "* How? How are you alive?" The other children just gave each other a content smile before they moved on to explain it.

* * *

They were about to find salvation. It was finally going to be over. At least all six of them thought so, when in the final moment of removing the barrier, all was covered in bright light. Was this it? Was this the afterlife, or what it was like to have passed on? They could have sworn that not, since they had passed on several times. At first they heard a distant wheezing. Then gradually, the white light faded and made room for them to find themselves in the garden of the monster king's home. They all saw each other, each one once again bearing whatever they had with them when they themselves traveled through the Underground. And in front of the house's doorframe, again on his knees and broken down in tears, was the white-furred prince they had shared a body and thoughts with several times by now.

They couldn't see his face at first, just the floppy ears hanging down in front of it, until he eventually got back up and wiped his tears aside. "* Everyone, I'm sorry for all that happened to you. I can't undo the things that happened." They continued to listen intently. "* But there's something I can do. I have to do it." He almost started crying again, but caught himself after a second. "* You'll understand, but you have to find Frisk. I can feel that you all know what the surface is like. The humans will be scared and not very trusting. Find Frisk, please. He needs friends up there."

They all stood there in silence and confusion. They were dead, how were they going to help now? The boy with the gloves was the first to ignore this respond. He bolded his fist and took a decisive step in Asriel's direction. "* You can count on me! If there's a way to get to him wherever we're going, I will!"

The boy with the glasses stepped forward in the calm demeanour he used to put on in his lifetime. "* If there is any opportunity, regardless of what happens from now, I will be sure to take it."

After this, the girl with the frying pan worked up the confidence to follow up. "* I don't know what you mean, but I'll help however I can."

"* I've got ya covered."

"* Whatever happens from now, I'll try."

"* Somehow, we'll make it."

They all encouraged Asriel to go through with whatever he was alluding to. The last thing they remembered before all was covered in white light again, was a thankful smile on his face. Soon, each one of them woke up in bed. In their rooms. In the houses of their families. It took them all a while to realise, but they had families. With a father, a mother and in most cases even siblings. They even had memories of life with their families, and for the families they suddenly found themselves with, it was like nothing had ever changed. It was like all that happened - their previous lives - the children's home - the Underground - all of it was just a bad dream. And they might have believed that if it weren't for the fact that they knew each other. In their new lives that was.

And within the first few hours after all this happened, they quickly got in touch with each other again to compare stories. From their attempts at 'disproving' the past, they could tell that it wasn't a bad dream. They all remembered it, and their memories lined up. It was real. The Underground, the monsters, Toriel, Asgore, Asriel, it was all real. It was just that somehow, in the final moment of wielding the power of their souls, when he changed the memories of the monsters that Frisk befriended and restored the bodies of all monsters, he also had changed a lot more up here on the surface. He had given the six of them new bodies, whole happy childhoods of memories, and made families remember them as well. Everything about Mt Ebott was true. It brought them salvation by giving them all that they had ever wanted and they wouldn't have to return to where they were before. The realization was like waking up on all those birthdays and first days of Christmas that never happened, all at once.

Only that after that, they all had gotten it. They knew what he meant, their new lives weren't all good, there were a lot of bad people out here, and other humans would be careful to get anywhere near Frisk. They had to get to him. The only real advantage to others that they had, was a head start. They knew him, they knew Toriel, they knew their names and those of them that didn't live in Farfoot knew that the monsters would show up before they had any chance to be seen by anyone else. And that was all that they needed to convince their parents to follow the many different kinds of monsters to where they came from, when they, many of them disappointed over where they found themselves here, went back.

* * *

When the boy with the glasses was done explaining, they all paused to give Frisk a few seconds to digest all this. But even after taking a while to wrap his head around all this, he just looked back at them in wonder. "* Did you really think he cared so little about you, that he wouldn't make sure you started off with friends?"

"* I..." He struggled. He couldn't lose his composure now, with mother still around. The children avoided saying Asriel's name, they avoided saying anything that could reveal who they were to anyone around. After all, they had new bodies. Not even Mom recognized them. They figured that there was a reason for that. It took him a little longer to catch himself. "* Wow, I don't know what to say. I was just on the way to..." He didn't have to continue. He could tell from how they looked at him, that they all knew what he was planning.

Two of them just smiled and nodded while Rick responded. "* Go get him. We'll get in touch. If all goes wrong, we can still just come here if you leave some way of finding you here." The last thing they did before they parted ways, was that the boy wrote down Mom's number on his notebook. He did make it clear that he was aware that it would be useless on a human phone, but among all the monsters some were bound to have phones of their own.

After that, he went on and watched his Mom collect the numbers and addresses those three grownups were giving her and going on to chat with them on random subjects. The others were already gone deeper into the underground. It was only him, Mom and the other humans now. All the monsters had gone back.

He didn't want to wait. Mom would meet him when she caught up anyway. The bridge to Asgore's...no...to Dad's house was empty. Undyne had really convinced all of them. Nobody was left. The bridge was silent. The grey buildings of New Home's inner city were towering at the side of the bridge. He went along with hesitation. He didn't hear anything. And didn't see anything. He was alone, at least he seemed to be.

But there was a feeling. He couldn't shake the feeling that he was watched. Could it be..."* Flo.." There was no-one behind him. "* ...wey?" He did hear something. But it didn't come from the bridge. It didn't feel like this was what his feeling came from. In the distance, on the wall at the side of the bridge, he did see a hardly recognizable wide dark 'shadow' crawl up the wall of Dad's house, right as he was at the centre of the bridge.

But he was certain that that wasn't where he was watched from. He slowly turned around. No-one. He quickly turned around. He did hear a faint step. Without moving an inch, he tried to grab behind his back. There was nothing there. On the other side, back at the castle, another shadow was making it's way up. He thought he heard something behind him. He spun around one more time. But he really was alone.

Way down, in the distance, something white with a rough, slopey shape was moving and being pulled up, from where the shadows had disappeared far above. He heard another faint tap on the bridge, but at this point, he knew there'd be nothing there if he looked. He just froze up, looking down the bridge as the two slopes were becoming less and less steep, as from the looks of it, something was hanging between them and moving upwards.

When it finally arrived at the height of the bridge, a horrifying screech echoed across the stone walls all around. "* MUFFET AUDREY GLASBURY!" On the rising bed of dense cobwebs sat a very long woman. She must have been about Mom's height, but she was absolutely thin, if it weren't for the black dress covered in frills with a petticoat that went all the way to her feet. She supported herself on her six arms, readying for a jump. Her skin was light purple, but her hair that reached half-way down her already long back, was pitch black. She had five dark eyes and two long fangs looked out of her open mouth as she jumped off the webs, straight past Frisk and stopped behind him. "* What on earth has gotten into you? I was worried sick!"

This time, when he turned around, there actually was someone. A now struggling Muffet was standing behind him, each arm trying to free himself from the grip of one of the larger monster's hands. "* Just disappearing for a whole day, only for me after desperately looking for you, to find out you were lazying around at the royal castle." Muffet closed her eyes in protest, when the other monster, slowly but surely, was dragging her back to the still hanging cobwebs. "* Look at the poor little boy, he's terrified - LOOK AT HIM." She freed up two of Muffet's arms to force her head to look back at Frisk. He couldn't really tell what her face looked like.

"* Greetings, Miss Tuffet. " Mom had arrived.

In an instant, the larger spider creature's demeanour changed completely. She didn't let Muffet go, but her facial expression softened up and she smiled at the boss monster. "* Toriel! What a pleasure. It must have been almost twenty years now."

"* Come to me, my child." He quickly ran back to her. It wasn't like he couldn't turn things back if this got deadly for him, but it was still paralyzing when it happened the first time. "* How are your children?"

The spider lady laughed. "* Oh, you know. The usual - going to school, big one's already hunting pets, the little ones are right here." She turned around. On her back, wrapped in an extension of her dress, hung two small, bald monsters that roughly looked like they belonged to the two of them. Purple skin, yet a bit darker than that of the more grown ones, five eyes and two fangs each but with comforters in their mouths. "* Oh and I presume you haven't met little Muffet yet. Going to school - leaving school - playing her little bakery games - sneaking after humans - scaring her mother to death." With the last two parts, her voice turned back into a scary screech and in each eye a pink pupil, aimed straight in the direction of Muffet's face, flared up. She then rose back up and laughed. "* Huhuhu - girls her age. They do the most befuddling things."

"* It's nice to meet you again once in a while." Mom pulled him closer and stroked his head.

"* Most certainly, we should meet for a cup of tea not before long. I would love to hear how things have been going. I heard the barrier is gone now. Is it true?"

"* Yes, a lot are preparing to leave for good."

"* Hoho. Who knows, if I can get a hold of some big enough spiders up there, I might think about moving up there too."

"* What might interest you - there are orcs. Here - on the surface right above us."

All of a sudden, Tuffet had a wide smile on her face and her eyes had a certain sparkle to them. "* Orcs? This is getting more interesting by the minute. It is absolutely mandatory that we two meet up for a cup of tea, some time. Then you can tell me everything about it." From somewhere behind her back, below her broodlings, she pulled up a tiny scratch pad and a pen. She was still holding a tight grip on at least four of Muffet's wrists at all times. From the grip in her hand, it seemed Mom could sense that he was scared.

"* Here is my number, call me to arrange for tea. As for you." She was moving directly in Frisk's direction. He couldn't believe a face could close in so fast, just from the person standing in place and bending foward. "* No reason to be afraid. People like her and me, we turn pretty harmless when we grow up." She smiled at him, even with her eyes closed, but he stood in place and tried to keep making as neutral-looking a face as he could as he waited for nothing other than her to back off.

Which eventually she did. Slowly but surely, she heaved her still resisting daughter on the white cloth, got on herself, and the webs descended down from the bridge again. The shadows, now crawling back down as the webs they were carrying were moving down with them, were probably spiders that the monster was instructing somehow. This must have been how Muffet could manage to show up out of the seemingly empty darkness every time he passed her bridge.

It was only after the spiders were gone, that he started letting himself be led back. "* You shouldn't worry so much. They take getting used to, but they're actually quite nice." Yes, probably. When they weren't busy murdering and cannibalizing people. Frisk highly doubted, that he was the only person that ever didn't buy Muffet's full price doughnuts. And the memory around it was kind of a blur, but he could have sworn that he recalled her insinuating that she wanted to kill Alphys.

He used Mom's habit of leading him by the hand ever since they left, to make her revisit both sides of Dad's house. Even if she was hesitant to follow. She probably knew what he was doing, and he didn't care. Even last night, when she put him to bed, she asked him why he would want Dad to help raise him. He simply told her to her face that she must have known he's nowhere near that bad a person.

That tone in her voice when she talked about him. The look on her face. It wasn't disgust. She seemed to try and make it seem like disgust but it was contempt. Contempt and something he couldn't really put a finger on. But he could tell that they missed and needed each other. Everything about them screamed it. And everyone but Mom could tell.

He knew who knew the two of them well enough to help. Much better than he himself ever could. Who probably knew the key to bringing them back together. He really, really hoped that he was going to be successful in the ruins.

In the very first room they reached after exiting the elevator to the CORE, their path was blocked by a wall of red blocks, with white lines of something dusty in between them, arranged to look like a brick wall. "* OH MY! IF IT ISN'T THE STAR OF THE SHOW." There were cameras all around pointing at Frisk, Mom and the wall from all sorts of angles. Next to the wall stood a purple pterodactyl with some boxes of sand in the corner.

The boss monster took a step back to assess her surroundings. "* What is all this?"

"* WE'RE TESTING ONE OF MY ENTRIES FOR THE RIGHT AMOUNT OF SAND IN OUR SHOW BRICKS. THE HUMANS'LL WANT IT BIGGER! MORE EXPLOSIVE! WITH MORE IMPACT! - but without actually hurting the audience. EVERY GROUP OF TWO GETS TO DO THE OPENING."

Mom was about to just pull him to move past this. "* We're not interested in this nonsense."

The dinosaur stopped them. "* Please, just a moment. Stand right over there. Okay. A little further away. And now both repeat after me. Oh no!"

After a sigh of annoyance, she decided to indulge in this. "* Oh no!"

Frisk never minded this kind of stuff. "* Oh no!"

"* OH YES!" In one crash, sand and dust flew all across the room, and so did the red boxes, as Mettaton's blocky form broke through the fake brick wall. One of them actually flew far enough hit Frisk's knee, but it wasn't strong enough to hurt him. "* OH NO - OH YOU'RE UNHARMED. OKAY. SHOW ME THE FOOTAGE." After looking at the screens that were laid out behind the wall, he continued. "* NOT ENOUGH SAND. STILL MORE, SCOTT."

"* Of course, Mr. Mettaton Sir."

He told Mettaton, that they were probably the last two to come through here before they moved on. Once they had navigated past the heaps of used-up pre-stacked brick walls, the rest of the journey was a walk in the park. Only that now, that time was moving forward a little more than it had for a long time, of what the riverman sung, the intelligible line was different. "* From monsters away you keep this thing...Tra, la, la..."

In Snowdin, at the outpost they came by, Dogamy and Dogaressa were sitting in the snow. There were sheets of white paper on the ground and Dogaressa picked one up and sniffed on it. "* Hm...Lily and Daffodil?"

They both soon winced. "* No, sorry. Lily and Orchid."

Frisk wanted to know what they were up to. He walked straight to them and asked: "* What are you two doing?" Mom gave him a disapproving look. It appeared that this kind of curiosity wasn't appropriate.

They both seized what they were doing and while Dogaressa almost got up, both followed his movements with their noses. "* Training our sense of smell. I got flowers in our short time above and we've rubbed them on these." Frisk took one of them and tried to smell what was on them himself. He didn't smell anything. It caused Dogamy to laugh. "* That's more of a dog thing. There's not enough for you to tell. Unless humans are more like dogs...Are they?" He shook his head.

With that, they went back to playing scent cards.

When they crossed the door, went through the long corridor, arrived at Mom's house in the ruins, he was getting increasingly nervous. He let go of her hand and stopped at the entrance. He needed to think of something to distract her. It wasn't even just this. He was getting more and more unsure. What if he wouldn't make it? He wouldn't for sure if she was listening and watching.

He could ask her to bake a cake, see if he got her to sit down and read one of her books, ask her to fetch whatever she wanted to bring outside for a start. But none of this was right. He owed her that he told her the truth, at least when and where he ever could. "* Mom..."

"* What is wrong, my child?"

"* He's shy. Very shy. If you come with me, he will know and hide. I'm sorry, but I need to go alone."

At first, she was confused. But then she smiled. "* I understand. Off you go, I'll be waiting here."

This wasn't good enough. "* Mom, I need to trust you with this. This is important to me. He WILL know."

She simply laughed, walked over to the living room and sat down with a book. "* You go already. I won't have moved an inch." He wished he could believe this. But this was as good as it got.

With an icreasing uneasiness, he stepped out onto the patches of dried leaves that were probably once flowerbeds. Knowing that this might be the point where he brought his friend to the surface. It filled him with DE...wait. No this was a bad idea. What if something bad happened to Dad? On the other hand, Undyne just had said he was fine. In the worst case, he could alwazs reset and do it all over again. Knowing that this might be the point where he brought his friend to the surface after all. It filled him with DETERMINATION.

He walked all the way back. Past all the solved puzzles, all the areas where he used to encounter monsters that hesitantly attacked him, walked a wide circle around the dummy, he went all the way back to the start. Mom trying so hard to create a bond that already been there for a long time really helped him keep himself together. At least now that nobody was watching, he didn't have to keep holding it in. He didn't have to keep pretending like everything was alright. So nobody would be worried, or suspect what he more or less had promised not to let them know.

And on the way, no longer forced to put up this pretense, he was trembling. What if he wouldn't succeed? What if he would never see his friend again? He thought of the things he was told yesterday. What Asriel was putting himself through. Staying back in the dark, alone. Sheltering himself from the light and all the people he ever cared for, as their lives pass without him. He didn't want it to end like this. It wasn't right. When he finally reached the final room, the first room, he stopped. The one where he escaped and his new life began. The one where he met Asriel one last time. He wiped his tears aside and got himself back together.

"* As.." No. He couldn't do that. What if Mom followed him after all? If she heard, she would remember, even through LOADs. Maybe not as a coherent memory, but as a distant inkling that could lead to her finding out later. He couldn't let that happen. Besides, he promised to Asriel not to think that way. There was no way he was still Asriel. And Frisk didn't care. He just wanted his friend to come along anyway. See the surface. Enjoy life with the others. Because there was one thing he never really believed.

"* Flowey? Flowey! It's me! I know you can hear me, wherever you are. Are you here? Or over there?" He tried to stay between the first and second room. There was no way his friend wasn't here somewhere. He was absolutely certain. "* Well one of the two, but I know you're here somewhere! Please, come with me. Come with me and see the sunlight, we can live up there together. I know you're probably here, hiding in the dark. Sulking. Sulking and wanting to just sulk and wait for all time to run out.

I know you don't want people to think of you as him. I know you're afraid something might happen that would hurt them again. I know I made that promise and I'll keep that promise. But that doesn't mean it has to be this way. Come with me. As Flowey. We can play games together, watch T.V., go to school together. If you're worried about what the others think of you, show them a different side of you. Show them good Flowey. The Flowey from before you stopped caring. The Flowey that wanted to make everyone happy." Nothing. He screamed into the darkness. "* Talk to me, Flowey! Please!"

But there was no sound, no movement, nothing. It was like he was talking to the walls. He was crying his eyes out trying to convince the walls to follow him. "* I know you think you don't deserve it. I know you think this is your punishment for the things you did as a Flower, but what did you actually, really do? Nothing you did mattered, you knew you could undo everything and start over. What's pain and death if you can just undo it? I get that. I know what it's like. But please, look me in the eye and tell me you would have hurt a single fly if you didn't know you could undo it."

No reaction. But he wouldn't give up. He was determined to bring him back. "* It didn't matter for a very long time, but I'm certain that when it mattered, you were kind and tried to do the right thing. I know you're afraid you might change. You're afraid that you start doing bad things again, just because you're a soulless flower. That you start hurting people because you don't have feelings. But think about this. You explored every detail, every variation, every combination of what you did down here, you were so curious and still think you felt nothing?" He sat down with his back against the doorframe and wiped his face. Why was this not working?

"* Maybe you felt very little, but why would something with no feelings want to know? That makes no sense. It doesn't matter how faint, it doesn't matter how small, I'm sure deep down inside of you, he's still there. That's what drove you. That's what has always driven you. I never really believed that you really have no feelings whatsoever. I know that you've always held on to whatever you had, and that you were never really cruel. You always were a good person. And even if you were right. Even if you had no feelings, I do. And I will miss you! I already do. If you don't want this for yourself, do it for me! Flowey! Please! Please! I don't want this without you! I don't want to go up there without you! You lied to me, Flowey! This ending isn't happy at all! It's not happy without you!"

He kept crying and hoping for his friend to come to him. But nobody came.


	8. Dank, Danker, Yet Danker

The Monster King's Resolve

Chapter 08

Dank, Danker, Yet Danker

* * *

"I've got to say, helping the humans advance in the field of electronics was one of the best decisions of my life!"

"Say what now?"

"You don't believe me? All right, just one second...hm humans and their 'accessibility', why not keep their mobile devices complex and sensible...okay now see this picture? This is Bob Fences, you can probably tell who that is, Sven Occupations there and the handsome doctor smiling between them is me."

"I...I don't believe it."

"Wakey wakey! Time traveler! If you like we can stop by and talk to both of them some time, but now back to what we're here for. One of the best decisions of my life was to help the humans advance in the field of electronics. Soon, they kept pressing the limit of processing power their machines had even without me lending them a hand, and eventually, they created a planetary network - the internet - all on their own. This gave rise to an endless ocean of an every skeleton's greatest of pleasures..."

"puns?"

"PASTA?"

" **Memes!** I'm talking about memes! From 'Conspiracy Poyang' over various repurposed film quotes all the way to political candidates making anime real! Thousands of years of time travel and nothing was ever better than twenty-first-century memes! A lot of them are used to convey complex or nuanced thought patterns and apply them to different contexts where simple words couldn't do that, but expressions and cartoons can, some are just used to talk about facts and thoughts of every day life, some are used for political purposes, and some are even extraterrestrial monster types subtly communicating with humans..."

"Wait, does that mean that Ayy Lmao is from actual aliens?"

"What? Those grey, bulb-headed humanoids? Of course not, that's just silly Merkantilian film industry nonsense. Of course I'm talking about Nyancats and Doges, those are the actual aliens."

* * *

They sat down back in the part of the plane with the large, far-apart seats, but before the two of them could really get settled down, the curly-haired man came back with a few folders and threw them on a table in front of Asgore. "* You better not get too comfy. We're briefing you on where we're going now."

"* So what is this about?" William got up and walked to get to see the folders too.

The agent opened them and slid around some pictures, some photos, some diagrams made with various detection devices and a sketch. "* So you guys said your 'Barrier' was gone when? Yesterday afternoon? Yesterday evening?"

"* Afternoon I presume. We still had someone who needed to run some errands before we left."

"* Figured." He moved one of the pictures, the diagram closer to him. It displayed something wide. And huge from the looks of it. In fact, it was so large, whatever machine was used to try and create an image of it only covered a tiny corner. "* About at the same time, on the ocean to the west - we're on the way there, something showed up outta nowhere. Like it was just zapped into existence." He slid out more photos from the folder, all of them made apparently flying above roads and strange houses of very diverging size. They depicted some towns from above, but also a large city with skyscrapers. It was like...

The sudden movement of the machine lifting off shocked Asgore, despite having had this before, and William was already holding tight, just before it happened. But right afterwards, they resumed as if nothing had happened.

"* It's like a whole country, right? Except it's not." He showed him another picture, this time of an insanely wide metal platform that went from wherever it was looking from to a distance so far it might as well be the horizon. "* It sure is as big as a country." Then he slid one more picture, shot from an insane distance judging from the water and the planes and helicopters approaching it at the sides. "* It's an Island. Like a flying city, but bigger."

The pictures of the buildings looked very strange. Asgore had a bad feeling about what they were headed for. He had a faint idea, but what he thought of, he himself had never visited before, so it was just an empty guess. "* Then 'lo an' behold, you guys show up. Pretty much at the same time. You really gonna blame me for thinking one has to do with the other?"

"* Not at all. I just disagreed with your methods of acquiring my assistance."

The curl-haired agent shrugged. "* Well whatever. You're here, that's what counts. It all looks like one big joke, right?" He next showed some images that were shot on the ground. Close-up, it looked as strange as from the distance. Some of them looked almost normal if you looked away, but almost all of them were - well just that - strange. Some had a roof that wasn't made of two planes of bricks laid out diagonally on the outer walls, but three and the third one was just hanging in a random angle above the other two.

Some other suburban residencies would be built to look like ordinary residencies, only at different angles, like one where the entrance on the ground was at the centre of it's roof, or another one, which was obviously normal on the inside, but it's exterior was basically the same kind of house laid on one side wall. Others would not look like buildings at all, but were modeled after things like a giant, cut-off tube of glue with the cut-off end being the basement, a skyscraper modeled after an uneven stack of grey suitcases and a lighthouse that was built to look like a transparent salt dispenser, even with salt or some other crystal lined up against the glass from top to bottom.

"* Strange thing is, the place is really weird, in every building, not just the residencies everything's in-built..." Images of what looked like kitchens followed. And all utensils were really part of the kitchens, and the rooms themselves. Nothing was just placed there. Then another one of another kitchen, only that they had set up some large contraption that seemed to be attempting to damage or cut out a part of a kitchen counter. But despite it's size and the volume of sparks being visible, it barely even cut a minor dent. "* ...like it's all just one single thing. And you can't even try and look into it." He gave him another photo of that same kitchen, with a timestamp that indicated that it was taken afterwards. The dent was gone. "* Because it's somehow self-repairing."

He showed him the rest, but none of the images really had anything that Asgore didn't expect from what he saw on the previous ones. "* Whatever it is, it looks like it's either really magic, or way above any tech we have. On the other hand, we don't even have flying cities either, so there's that. When we got our hands on it, we knew we had to find out what it is and how it works, this could have the weapon we need."

Asgore twitched upon hearing that last bit. "* Weapon? What for?"

The agent got up from the table and started walking around. He seemed more agitated after being asked why they find a flying Island and the first thing they think of is to use it as a weapon in some way. "* The Dwarves of course. We're constantly in conflict with them. If Malikov and his dwarves found out about the treasure trove of tech we might be flying to, they'd be crashing this plane with no survivors."

Well this was highly unsettling. "* Nothing to worry, we're fine."

He gave Asgore a pat on his shoulderplate, before disappearing into a part of the plane further back. The perplexed boss monster just shuffled the pictures around, and got some more out of the folder the agent had left behind. It really did look like some sort of joke. Or an eccentric modern artist's work. Or as if it was designed to confuse. But he wasn't going to assume he knew what it was, even if he had a pretty good idea. For now, something else was on his mind. "* William..." The human, who had been looking out of the window for a while, came over to stand next to him again.

"* Yes?"

"* This man we met in Flemia. The one that helped convince them that we can stay. You seemed a bit tense. Who was he exactly."

With raised eyebrows and a bit of laughter, he burst out. "* Only one of the most powerful people on this planet."

"* An Elf is one of the most powerful people on this planet?"

This instantly broke the human's composure again. He raised his hands in alarm. "* Woah, woah you've really got to lay off these kinds of comments. When I said they can get you into trouble, I meant it."

"* In what way?"

"* It just had a negative sound to it. Which could come off as criticism. You can't criticise Elves, that's against the law."

What? Which sane creature would allow themselves to be forbidden to expose Elven trickery? This was deliberately inviting problems, not accidentally letting them happen. "* That's like trusting a wolf with a shepherd's herd."

This really made the human flinch and claw at Asgore with bared teeth. "* Asgore stop! I am not joking! Do you want to get us both behind bars?" He was obviously very stressed, but still more or less whispering so as to not attract too much attention.

He closed his eyes and raised a hand to calm him down with a smile. "* All right, I've understood. Just tell me who he is and what he wants."

"* He's Andrew Koppenberg. He co-owns Koppen&Birken, one of the most powerful banks that exist. Everyone who's anyone in human politics is on their payroll. Every single one of the commissioners you were talking to is on their payroll..hell, the Central Atelian Union - my party - I'm on their payroll. Everyone is taking donations from them." He looked into Asgore's eyes, trying to get a grasp of whether he was realisig it. "* The commissioners you were talking to don't really rule over the Federation. They're just proxies, it's that bank."

"* A bank that...Nevermind." If Elves had this standing currently, it was no wonder that corruption was rampant and bribery normal, but by now, he had realised that he wasn't supposed to say that out loud. "* All that aside then, what do you think he wants? Assuming this money is real like he told."

"* I don't know. Could be a lot of things. But if you're taking Elven money, what you should really be worrying about is not the Elves, it' the human dissenters. At this point, you're probably wondering why I'm telling you all this the honest way, if I was part of this for so long. Why not lie to you and pretend everything is wonderful? Truth is, I wasn't always part of this. I used to be a member of the Atelian Sovereigns. I used to campaign to gain independence of our nation and preserve humanity - maybe improve life there, but I've simply given up. Switched sides and took the easy route, because there is no hope for humanity. Only death."

"* What would make you say that?"

His eyes narrowed and he couldn't seemed to help laugh in a cynical way. "* I think you haven't quite gotten how bad things are." He hesitated. As if he was about to lay something out and changed his mind. "* Look, just take my word for it, okay? I don't want to bother you with little details, just know the following things. You might be worried that at any time, a monster could clash with a human and get into trouble with the police, but the truth is, even if that happened, you're safe. The police would simply release and refuse to prosecute. As long as you avoid drawing too much public attention, I'm pretty sure you monsters are free to do as you like. The system is protecting you, and you have no reason to worry about any problems coming from there. What you need to worry about are - again - human dissidents.

There is a growing brand of people - human people - rallying in the shadows, waiting for an opportunity to rally the people behind them and fight back against that system. It's these people you have to worry about. Should they ever get humanity to turn on the Orcs somehow - and others - , you will not want to get caught in the crossfire. Because I can already guess what they're going to think about you, what they're going to think your intentions are, what the consequences of letting you come to the surface will be. I can't even blame them, they can only go by experience, and their experience lies with Orcs. If you want the support of mankind in the long run, you will have to show them, that you are neither 'more Orcs' so to speak, nor that you are in any way like them. This is why I'm telling you this. Their assumption - their first impression, is that you're just more hostile moochers coming to collect a tax-funded handout and then to remove and replace them. If you want life on the surface to work out, this is what you need to change."

* * *

He just couldn't believe she was gone. Asgore lay silently in his bed and grasped the other side. The side where she used to sleep in. Tori...They were so happy together. Until she fell. Until she fought with death. Until she lost. With his nose running, he clawed the sheet. Why did this have to happen? They could have had so much more together.

The wide door opened, and in a crimson dress, the royal scientist stumbled in. "* Y-your majesty? I knew you still haven't left the room, so I..." She was carrying something. A grey object with two windows at the front, that required both of her hands to carry. Oh goodness, the moment she entered, she could tell he really did not leave this room the whole time. His scent filled the entirety of it. She made some space and placed it on the drawer.

The king's big, white frame didn't move an inch. Only his head shifted to the side to face her. It was a replica of the front door. But with a clock above the door. Alphys used a finger to move the longer of the two hands and then took a step back. After a few seconds, little blue birds slid up the wall, the object gave out pieping tones, and fixed onto a plank, a little white figure with horns and golden armor pieces, showed up through the doorframe in the centre.

"* You get it? It's you. Walking outside." She laughed.

"* That is nice."

No no no, she was losing him again. She went straight to the bed, sat on the left side, not far from where he was digging in his claws. "* Please, get up. Everyone's worried."

At least she got that far. He pulled his arm back and supported himself, so he could crawl to the end of the bed and sit next to her. "* It just feels like there's no reason to get up. Why bother?"

"* Don't say that!" In shock over what he was implying, she ran her arms around both his sides as far as she could, and rubbed her face against his bare chest. "* Don't ever even think that. You're not alone. You've got all of us." She looked up into his face. "* You've got me."

He looked back at her. Faced her with a warm smile and half-open eyes. "* Alphys..." He moved his left hand between the spikes on the back of her head. They sat their silently, stretching up, bending down, until with closed eyes, their lips...

* * *

"* This is hysterical!" Alphys heard a disturbing noise gradually move downstairs and in her direction, of which she knew it was just Undyne laughing. "* Alphys! Alphys! Tell me I'm imagining this. 'She ran her hand down his' what? HAHAHA" It soon dawned on her what she was talking about. She pulled away from the screen to discover Undyne reading...it. Complete embarrassment came over her.

"* No!" She jumped up and tried to grab it with no success.

"* What? 'The smooth length of his horns'? Oh, Alphys!", she went on, trying to cover her mouth while laughing uncontrollably. Alphys desperately tried again and again to jump and tear it out of her hand, or even somehow use the angle of this folder of stapled-together pages to sneak up, but there was no way she could keep up with someone as strong and fast as her.

By the time she had chased her all the way upstairs, she gave up and just covered her face in shame. "* Please, stop. Give it back!"

She was laughing even when talking. "* Give it back? No way, I'm gonna read this every night." She really hoped that she told correctly from the smile of her friend's wide open mouth and her rolled-back eye, and she was just joking. "* The Tales of Mr. Dreamy. Eighty-seven chapters - long chapters - and I read ahead, this is some really weird stuff you're into. Imagine if Asgore got a read of that."

She was getting really desperate. "* **Nooo**!" She wasn't even trying to get her hands any more, she just cowered together and kept screaming. Until she felt Undyne's hand ruffle the back of her head in her usual painful way.

"* I'm just messing with you. No-one's gonna see or hear about it from me." Alphys was relieved to see she was indeed putting it back into it's hiding place. At least she had only found 'The Tales of Mr. Dreamy' and not 'The Young Doc and the Beast of the Sea'. Who knew how she'd react to that. "* Come on, show me what ya got."

They went back down stairs and she went through two tabs. "* I-don't know what the others got, but these two places we can actually ask for help. That's what they're there for." But then she continued opening one after the other. "* Then here for pipelines, power lines, roads, cable, phone and internet connections...we need permits from all of them, and some charge fees."

Undyne folded her arms. "* What a pain. How are we gonna explain that to Asgore when he's back? How are we gonna explain this to everyone?"

She sighed. "* We're just going to have to. Maybe we can split up and visit them all at once."

"* Nah, that sounds like a bad idea. We need money anyway."

"* We could ask Mettaton. Maybe just selling something is easier..."

"IT'S ONLINE! AND IT HAS THOUSANDS OF VIEWS ALREADY!" Papyrus came storming in through the automatic door. Alphys thought about wondering how this could be true, but before anything else, she was glad that Undyne had put her folder back, now that someone else was here.

"PUT UP THE SITE NOW!" Sheesh, he was really excited about this. "I CAN'T BELIEVE IT! MY FIRST STEP TO FAME ON THE SURFACE!" Everyone else was worried about how to get set up to live outside and he was concerned with a video. And of all the people...

What she actually did to set up the other monsters' computers to dial into the human internet, wasn't so much to do the same that she did for herself, but instead she just put them in the same network she was using with her phone and used the lab's main server as a router for everyone. To her surprise, not only did Temmie have a laptop, she had her connection though the lab already set up before Alphys laid a single hand on it and she had made herself an OurPipe channel. When they arrived in Temmie Village, the Temmies had already set up a little greenscreen set with an elevated cardboard platform and two Temmies were dressed up as a pop tart and MoonShine princess from an old anime.

Papyrus stayed back as they moved on to the next monster's house, because the Temmies agreed to have him star on it as well. When she looked up the channel and found the video, it wasn't really something special, but astounding when you took into account that it was all Temmie-made. All that it really was, was pop-tart-Temmie riding through sparkling stars, drawing a rainbow after her, and at some point in between, Papyrus gliding past in front of her for about a second, which prompted another "DID YOU SEE IT! I WAS RIGHT THERE!" from the enthusiastic skeleton and all of it with a monotonous yet catchy music playing to it.

The comments below were filled with praise. Some actually relating to what was seen, some not relating to anything. Here and there a bad pun written in all small letters by a 'STS', and a few neutral ones to the effect of "* This is one of these monsters? They don't look so bad." All that was pretty good. She had to remember to commend the Temmies on that. However it was that they managed to figure it all out.

The sliding doors opened again. "SANS! HAVE YOU SEEN IT?"

"* already shared on the undernets, buddy. gotcha covered. by the way, you seen these comments? they sure are interesting."

Papyrus' eyesockets narrowed as he stayed silent for a second. "THEY'RE FRUSTRATING."

Undyne wasn't really convinced that that was helping. Neither was Alphys. And when their eyes met, they knew they shared the thought. The Undernet and the internet in the underground in general was pretty empty. "* I'm pretty sure that's not where the views come from. Is there anything like Undernet up there?"

Alphys hesitated. "* I..I'm not sure about posting anything there..." When they asked why, she told them what happened to her.

"WOW. MUST BE A HARD BUSINESS BEING FAMOUS ON THEIR INTERNET THEN."

Undyne wasn't so easily shaken off. She didn't seem like she was going to join Alphys and just forget about it. "* If we wanna avoid coming off as this 'uno' thing, we're gonna have to find out, what it is."

And so, using Alphys' computer and using the bigger screen on the console to it's side as a second screen, they looked through the internet. Went into threads on small forums using the word, trying to find anything that made sense in that context. And eventually did find it. On the 'kun' sites, there was one imageboard that seemed like this was what the people in these threads were talking about. Politically Unorthodox. In short, 'uno'. What they saw was a list of threads on topics ranging from obviously every day politics, all the way to obscure esoterical topics, but they quickly decided to go for the one that was exactly the thing they wanted to know. What did this 'uno' thing think of them?

'Monsters thread - New Sheriff in Town Edition'. Before she noticed it for it's title, she noticed it for it's image. The first few, very large posts were a gallery of images that were obviously taken from when his majesty faced the press. Exactly those images of him standing in front of a bright field in the sunlight. Only that someone had photoshopped a cowboy hat onto his head with holes for his horns in every image, as well as a straw into his mouth and a star-shaped badge on his right shoulderplate.. And every image had captions or subtitles, but they weren't exactly what she remembered him saying. "* Howdy fellas. Mah name's Asgore Dreemurr an' ah'm the new Sheriff 'ere in town. We's just a buncha fine fellas from down under. Ah think we gon' buy ourselves some land right here. Build ourselves a nice lil' comfy place." And it went on like that. What was going on?

While she scrolled down, something seemed to set Undyne off, but unless she wanted to talk about it, Alphys would rather focus on trying to make sense of all these half-sentences, obvious in-jokes and small, ominous images of real and cartoon faces. To her surprise, she noticed she didn't even need an account to add something there. She couldn't resist but try around until she got how to respond, and try to get herself into the discussion. Apparently the people here didn't like the idea of the monsters showing up at all, or at best they were skeptical of them. In fact they seemed to be convinced that 'the elves' had sent the monsters somehow. She wanted to know what they were talking about. There was no way she could find any good info regarding how they could make the humans like them if she stuck to platforms that banned anyone who didn't already love them. Or at least pretended to.

Further down, there were multiple images taken from either seeing them drive around, or from that interview earlier. What got a reaction out of Papyrus was a gif of him smiling and spinning a floating bone, followed by a variation, where Sans caught all the bones. Way further down, she saw that someone had already posted Temmie's video. He was standing in place, but she could practically hear Papyrus bouncing on his toes nervously. "ASK THEM HOW THEY FOUND ME!"

"* I don't think they know you."

"DO IT!"

She obliged and added a sentence referring to the video. "* How did you like the skeleton?"

They reached the end, so she posted it along with her questions on what they were talking about when it came to where the monsters came from, and waited. Within seconds, multiple responses started coming in.

"* Spotted the elf."

"* Oh my! Stop it now, the humans know."

"* It was obviously the elves. The human kid they showed is just a frontman." They didn't say 'kid', but she dreaded to think what kind of connotations the word they were using probably had.

"* Orcs invading/fleeing in raw masses - young humans increasingly lacking opportunities - being artificially stripped of more through anti-human 'variety' programs - human poverty increasing drastically - human population decreasing drastically from getting 'culturally improved' by Orcs - then Monsters start streaming in to drain even more resources and probably 'culturally improve' even more humans - pure coincidence"

"* You Monster Online Defense Squad now?"

Papyrus didn't like how no-one was paying attention to him. "I SEE THEM WRITING. BUT NOTHING ABOUT ME."

Undyne pulled him back by the shoulder. "* Give us a minute, this is important."

She asked about the cultural improvement thing, but all she got were images of squares and streets covered in blood and human corpses. Something else that kept repeating itself, was rephrasings of the same question. If she wasn't paid to do this or had some other ulterior motive, why would she defend the monsters, here of all places?

It gave her an idea that she asked Undyne about. And she didn't like it, but she understood why Alphys wanted to do this. She didn't want to slip back into lying to people. She had turned over a new leaf and had to show honesty from here on in. She could have tried to just be a human that sympathised with them, but that wouldn't have been right. Lying about what she was to then enlist not necessarily earned sympathies from 'within'. She told them who and what she was, but at first, they just claimed she was role playing and that this was some low level trolling. Then she got them to explain to her what she had to do to prove it.

Among other things, this was where they could get Papyrus some more attention. She used her phone to take a selfie with herself trying to flash an insecure smile with a piece of paper she wrote a message on in her hand, Undyne still wrinkling her nose in confusion and for some reason, anger and Papyrus giving a thumbs up with a wide open smile.

After posting that, what followed was a downright barrage of small images of people either being amazed, laughing or something in-between. One of them just wrote down the current date and added "* - The day the monsters joined /uno/"

The skeleton's patience wasn't satisfied, he pushed Alphys' arms aside and started typing something of his own. "IT IS I! THE SKELETON FROM THE VIDEO. MY NAME IS PAPYRUS. WHAT DID YOU THINK? HOW WAS I?" It was pretty harmless, so nobody got in the way.

He soon actually did get that answer he was waiting for all this time. His eyesockets widened with joy when he looked down to see what praise the people on this site would have for him. "* Your scarf looks torn and dirty, you should clean it or get a new one."

"HOW DARE THEY!", he blurted out. "MY SCARF IS MAGNIFICENT! I COULD NEVER SWITCH IT OUT!"

Undyne picked up the end of it that was hanging down by the ends of her fingers. "* They're kinda right though, it could do with some work."

"NONSENSE! IT IS STILL WONDERFUL." Okay, maybe they'd get him to swap it out or get it fixed another time. "THESE PEOPLE ARE JUST RUDE. LEAVE THAT SITE AT ONCE!" Well she could only do just that at this point. She would probably go back there later, to see what it was all about, but no need to do that all right now.


	9. Her Queen

The Monster King's Resolve

Chapter 09

Her Queen

* * *

"Escapism. A coping mechanism that everyone is guilty of engaging in. Even me. People indulge in it to escape the harshness and monotony of reality. And while it may seem nice to get away from it at each time of indulging in it, it really is always just a means of delaying having to deal with it. It never actually solves anything. In fact, oftentimes, the longer you try to escape life, the worse whatever trial you face gets.

Some people escape the boredom of captivity by travelling around, some avoid dealing with painful realities by putting their hobbies into overdrive, like reading or gardening, others put off dealing with problems by obsessing over far-eastern cartoons or some computer game, and yet others think the best way to deal with heartbreak is to flee themselves into short-sighted relationships with the first person that's sympathetic to them..."

"You're talking about me, aren't yo - ow!"

"Yes, you're damn right I'm talking about you! And in more ways than one."

"B-but I'm doing stuff...I'm moving forward..."

"But you could move forward a lot faster, if you didn't spend so much time watching..."

"Ouch!"

" and reading about those cartoons! Remember, the last time your talents were really put to use, you almost engineered the end of the universe. You owe the universe, you should give the people something back by working hard."

"B-but - I-I didn't have a choice - I...ow!"

"Yes you did. No-one was taking control of you, you could have just not done it. One Brainlizard's life in exchange for the continued existence of the universe. In fact, you weren't even planning on reproducing, so it's effectively no life in exchange for the continued existence of the universe. But you didn't do that, did you?"

"Argh - s-stop it, please!"

"doc, why're you doing this?"

"It's called negative reinforcement, I need to train some choices and behaviours out of her. Hey, Alphys. Calm down. Remember your time with Undyne? Remember all the moments you shared? How much you loved her? Yes - that feeling..."

"Owie! Please stop!"

"Seriously, how did you not see this one coming ahead of time?"

* * *

She wasn't thinking much, watching Alphys start trying to communicate with those humans and read up on what they thought. It was only when she was reading as many of the messages that Alphys was scrolling past as she could, that she came across one that made what she saw on the surface obvious.

This little punk lied. Among the many things, Undyne had read something. "* That feeling when Victor makes fluffy real but not anime." Not anime...she always had a bit of an inkling ever since they arrived. The humans sent people with guns, not people with swords, or mechs. None of the people she saw had cat ears, and honestly, a monster that summoning a spear seemed to be the most fantastical thing the humans had seen. This was one of the things she was holding onto and gave her hope. The thought of seeing the giant robots defend the human lands, meeting beautiful men with giant swords, flying princesses to save them from demons and all that other awesome stuff. It was all a lie. Perhaps a lie to help them forget about the dark side of real life. But still a lie.

She felt so alive, when she finally was outside. It was like the hope to see all this was giving life force just by itself. She just held herself back for the time being. She lied in wait while Alphys and the others were done with this thing. Taking a picture, talking to strangers online. As soon as Papyrus got Alphys to stop their little chat with the outside world, Undyne made an excuse and headed straight for Snowdin. She ran all of the way to her destination by foot. Some of it was busy, some of it completely empty. Until she came to that door that she caught Sans lazying around at from time to time to knock on it a few times. She knocked with some real strength, those doors were probably really thick if no-one but Asgore's ex could open it.

A boss monster appeared behind it, with a very austere look on her face. "* What is it?"

"* I've gotta see Frisk. It's personal."

"* I don't think that would be a good idea. He's getting ready for bed."

As if she was gonna let that stop her. She tried to push through, but Toriel wouldn't let her. "* It'll only take a minute, I promise."

It didn't convince her. "* I said no. Go back to the others."

She didn't want to deal with this now, she just continued attempting to push her way past her. "* Better now than later."

But a flame flared up in Toriel's hand, which forced Undyne to back off at least for a step. "* As your Queen, I order you to leave."

"* As my Queen..." Undyne's pupil narrowed more than it had for a long time as she fixated Asgore's ex with it. She really had some nerve. Once they were settled up there and had...no, screw that. She didn't want to wait until god knows when on the surface. In the middle of nowhere in the forest of Snowdin was the best place and the best time. She had to use all the discipline she had honed to seem calm and collected. "* Toriel, maybe now is the best time. There's a thing we need to discuss. In private."

She was pretty unsure, what Undyne was on about. Or at least pretending to be. Toriel didn't care either way at this point. "* Oh...do we? I'm afraid I'm not following."

She pulled her hand off of Frisk's and let her go when she finally got them separated. "* Oh believe me, it really seems like we do." She got Toriel to follow her, but she was asking what this was about. "* Just follow me. You'll understand." She was sure hoping she didn't just yet. She moved through the close-together trees, listening to Toriel moving towards her.

Once Toriel stopped to ask what this was about again, Undyne seized the moment. From four different directions, she aimed four spearheads to move directly in her direction and then change directions to cut into her and pin both her hands against a tree. Each wrist stuck between the blades of two spearheads. Toriel didn't even notice what was up until it was too late. "* What is this? Undo this at once!", she protested. Still in such high spirits, huh. Well she wasn't going to stay for long. Undyne could ready a spear and aim it straight at her neck when she walked up to her with ease.

"* My Queen, huh." She could see the boss monster's hands flare up, but she didn't have to say anything before she understood. What was she going to do? Light the entire thicket of wood on fire with herself in the middle of it? "* That's right. Now it's time for some real talk." She gave her a wide grin, showing her the entirety of her jaws.

"* Don't think I didn't hear your little jab at me today." She still had her spirits.

"* So what? Think I'm gonna take it back?" Toriel didn't answer, but she wasn't looking straight at her either. Was she really going to do this? Unload it all on her? Well it was probably a now-or-never situation. "* You've got some nerve coming back, and then going around bossing people around like that. You really are that full of yourself aren't ya?" She didn't get a reaction. "* Coming back out here all self-righteous...do you even know what you did to him? To all of us? To Asgore? Do you have any idea?" A distant hint at a reaction, but nothing other than a subtle movement. "* While you were hanging out in the ruins, having a good time, I got to witness what you did to him. Every day since he took me in to train me. I heard what you did to him, when he was alone at night, locked away,"

For a moment, she did look back at her with narrowed eyes. "* Wait, what were you doing at his house at night.."

"* THAT'S BESIDE THE POINT!" She couldn't let her get any ground with details like that. "* The monsters needed their Queen...he needed his Queen. And the Queen ran away. The moment it wasn't just a fancy title, but meant you get to share his weight, you chickened out!" This wasn't good. It wasn't Toriel that was trembling. It was herself. But she couldn't back out now. What kinda wimp would do that? "* You really have some nerve calling anyone a coward but yourself. But you believe it don't ya? You really think you were in the right." There, for a moment, she was about to slightly look up.

"* In those years, at first I was convinced it was really just that. You caring for humans that much! But I had a thought. A thought that I cast away every time I had, because I couldn't bear it. That thing you said just before I joined you yesterday. You told him this idea way back then didn't you? I know you did because he told me. I didn't wanna think about what it could mean, but over time, I couldn't avoid it. What would have happened if he did as you said? The villagers killed the last one that left, you really think they'd just have a nice talk if someone that looked like the last one went back up right away? You really thought they'd spare someone in the same situation as when they didn't last time?

You know Asgore. You know what kinda guy he is. Chances is even with a human soul he couldn't really hurt a fly. It could only go two ways. Best case scenario for us, they force him to kill 'em all, he does and takes their souls to release us into all out war." She didn't want to finish it, but she had to. She couldn't keep herself from further pushing the blades of her spears between which Toriel's hands were trapped into the wall. "* Best case scenario for you...he SPAREs them all and dies, we stay locked away in the Underground forever, but at least you get to rule as Queen."

Finally, a reaction. This made her really angry, and she struggled, her hands open bearing their claws. "* Don't you dare even think..."

"* **SHUT UP**!" She held her spear closer to her neck. She needed to see every bit of how she reacted. She didn't want it to be true. Pathetic. She was trying to be all big and intimidating, grunting with her voice and all, but she couldn't suppress a small whine within it. "* Please tell me I'm overthinking this. Please tell me this isn't the kind of monster you've become!" She couldn't match Undyne's teeth, but she was now showing hers as well. This wasn't enough. "* **TELL ME**!"

They just stood there, Undyne still focusing her anger at her. "* You know what, it doesn't even matter. It doesn't matter whether you thought that far, because him listening to you would have brought exactly that result. And it's way too convenient to ignore.

All the others are still so used to thinking of you as Queen. You just were their Queen for so long. But what are you really? To me, just an old ex of a friend that's very dear to me, and who almost cost him his life." With every following word, she shook with anger. "* He was the world to me. In those few years that I knew him. But you were with him for centuries and you couldn't be bothered to care enough to forgive him a single, completely understandable moment of weakness! You couldn't be bothered to be the pillar to lean on the one time you were really needed!"

What was she doing? She was running close to pouring her heart out to this creature, doing all she could to scare her, yet she herself was the one getting worked up. "* Right now, you have the support of the people. Right now, they still see you as their Queen. But don't take that for granted. And NEVER think that I'll call you that. You're always just one little or big mistake from losing their support, and without it, you'll have none."

Of all these things what got most of a reaction from Toriel's eyes was a distant mention of Asriel. Maybe she had to keep going that way. "* Then there's Frisk. If this Aberdeen thing is true, he needs a Dad AND a Mom even more than he would otherwise. Because if he's an orphan, that means he had both, loved both, and lost 'em." She closed her eye to get a clear view when looking back at her. "* He had people he genuinely loved with all his heart and lost 'em." Maybe this was it. She put on a wide grin - wide enough to show off her jaws and continued only speaking through her teeth. "* But what in the world would YOU know about that?"

"* How can you say such a thing?" Finally. Tears. Finally a shred of humanity from this creature. Finally her face had a look that made sense to her. She kept struggling and shouting, but what was she going to do?

"* Around him, we can keep pretending it's all hunkey-dorey, but that's only for him. You damn well better care about him, and when I'm done, even if you were to stop caring on your own, you'll have a damn good reason to keep watching him.

Then there's Asgore. Don't tell me you didn't see him! The way he looks at you, the way he begs for more if you say a single word to him. How desperate he is for anything nice from you, even if it's just being friends. After all this, you're still everything for him. He still loves you and what ever he tries to tell us, you and I both know he couldn't imagine being with anyone but you in a thousand years. He'd get on his knees and beg if it got him any affection."

Asgore's ex was still pressing against her 'shackles', but she had stopped shaking by now. "* You are everything to him. Losing you for good would shatter him so bad...I don't wanna think of what he'd do then..." She couldn't even look at Toriel herself any more, and turned to look into the barely treaded-on snow to the side. She feared the thought so much.

At last in shock, she whispered: "* What are you saying?"

She looked back up to her. She need to get this right, show her that she meant business. "* I'm saying you better do what you can to keep that public support. I'm saying you better do everything you can to care and watch over that kid. And I'm saying you better pray for Asgore's feelings for you to stay that way." She inched closer to her face until there was barely any space left. "* Because right now, these three things are the only ones keeping you alive."

Without a single other word, she sped away from her until she was certain to be out of sight and undid her spearheads. She quickly fled into a dark corner between the trees. What had happened to her? She thought this would be her all intimidating speech, but for it's brief duration, she completely lost her composure and all the feelings she thought she got over when getting to know Alphys had come back to her. She couldn't tell Alphys, no-one could know she was such a wimp. She really hoped Toriel wouldn't realise how much her reputation meant to her. Then again, this probably wasn't the kinda thing Asgore's ex would boast about.

* * *

With Papyrus put to bed safe and sound in their house in Snowdin, he had a bit more freedom to move around without having to worry about anyone running after him and seeing what he was up to. Sans didn't think it was right to trust letting him Sleep at the hotel yet, not if that meant him being all alone. It was something pretty precarious to navigate beforehand, selling hotdogs to the busy monsters in Frisk's original path, all of which were either training some skill or trade, or doing what they could to have something to show for up above. For the most part, the selling of hot dogs wasn't what he was bothered about Papyrus seeing, but moving from post to post selling them at three different locations at the same time.

He was already kinda nosey when Sans was running his majesty's errands. He was fetching a gold bar from the royal treasury, brought it to the hotel, they then told him they couldn't just accept actual gold as payment, but agreed to keep it there anyway. Then again, seeing their faces when he just walked in there and dropped a bar on the table made the trip worth it.

He found the big car they were driving around in earlier to stand almost exactly where it had dropped them off. The agent inside was probably dozing off, but that was hard to tell with him sitting back and having put on sunglasses. Then again, why put on sunglasses at night if not to conceal your eyes? What he said, after Sans woke him up to talk to him was kinda worrying. He hadn't gotten any new orders, or even any calls for that matter, and the way he said it made it sound like that wasn't supposed to happen.  
Then, way earlier when the monsters had just gotten back to the Underground he visited Asgore's sister to tell her that the barrier was gone and that there was a surprise for her outside. She was kinda down when he visited. In fact she was always kinda down. Sans didn't remember her visiting a single time and being in too much of a good mood.

Asgore's sister lived far out in a big house in the narrow tunnels that connected the way apart areas of the Underground. It was crazy how big it actually was, if all monsters wanted out immediately, that'd be a pretty damn big catastrophe. Good thing the only ones that really wanted to see the surface as soon as possible lived on the immediate path that the humans used to travel on. And not even all of them, and to different extents. Once they found out, what it was like on the surface, there was probably a lot that preferred it down here. Depended really on how addicted they'd get to that fresh air.

He could feel it too, it was like some drug. You felt more healthy up there. He had been told that it were the souls of passed-on humans that provided an atmosphere of soul power that monsters were naturally adapted to living in. It was really interesting to actually feel, since he had never been to the surface before. At least not as a monster. He really hoped that this wouldn't be too much of a dealbreaker. There was no way they could just more than quadruple the size of that village and bring all of them up here at once. Building that little addition Asgore was talking about was already a miracle if they were to get that done on their own. A lot were gonna have to stay until they had gathered more money to build more. But that was Asgore's worry until further notice, it wasn't like Sans was the king here.

By the time there wasn't much of a demand for hot animals any more, he decided to do one more thing before he checked on the others. He fetched the old one-in-all measuring pad from the shed and jumped to the surface. He stopped at the cliff just outside the castle. The sky was now dark and covered in clouds, and he could feel a few slight drops of water. So this was what actual rain felt like, huh? It was neither the torrents of Waterfall, nor the complete lack of rain from hotland. It was somewhat in between. And it was...relaxing.

And the result of his measurements still confused him. His body was messing with it, it couldn't measure his stats any more. At least unless he used his power converter to reduce his power way down. It needed adjustments if he was gonna measure any monster's stats with that.

Alphys wasn't in her lab. At least not the normal one. Maybe it was time to reveal to her a little more of what he knew about the place. Well it wasn't like she didn't know that he knew about the true lab, but to his knowledge, she was only aware of the bottom level of the true lab. Most of it was completely untouched, and he had checked from time to time in her time working here. And indeed, in one of the dark hallways, she was sitting with a few metal bars and welding equipment. The fridges were shoved aside to make space, and there were scraps of other metals in boxes with names of the metals.

With a strained sigh, she wiped the sweat off her forehead. "* need some help?" She wheezed and jumped back at hearing his voice.

"* S-s-sans...jeez you s-scared me to death...how did you get here?" She was really afraid, but still tried her best to smile. "* It shouldn't be possible to get here without m-my help..."

He just nodded and raised his eyebrows. "* ya know, shortcuts. I got 'em." He walked around that little set of metal bars and pipes she had been working on. She figured it wasn't time to weld with him around and folded up the mask. "* see you already got down to making that bike."

"* I'm sorry, I'm gonna need more time for that. This stuff isn't good enough to melt these materials, I need completely different equipment set up. I'll need something with programmable machinery to do it and more solid materials and...Please, please understand." She was shuffling forwards, begging.

But he just put a hand up and calmed her down. "* nah, no worries. it can wait." She genuinely had taken the first opportunity to work on it. He was thinking during all of this. If their time in the Underground was over, if the resets were coming to an end - at least to some degree -maybe making an effort was worth it again. And Alphys wasn't the royal scientist any more. But she had the know-how that came with it.

Who knew, maybe it would come in handy later on. "* hey, wanna see something cool?" He was going to show her. He didn't have to show her how to get there after all.  
She was hesitant though..."* Y-yeah...I guess..." She was very careful. Grinning, but grinning with caution.

"* take my hand." He had seen the shower room being empty and the light being off. That was a good place to use to take her to where he was gonna take her. "* don't let go." He guided her to the shower room, pushed away her hand when she was about to turn the light on, and moved inside with her. Now that she couldn't see anything, he could easily teleport her, take the two of them through a 'shortcut'. Into the area of the lab right above this one. "* see? shortcuts." They ended up in another dark corridor, but when they reached the end of it, he let go of her to walk up to the next room and turn the lights on.

When she followed, all her fear was gone and had made space for awe and surprise. She covered her open mouth with her claws and turned around in amazement. He had taken her to an area she didn't know yet. A true-true-lab, if she wanted. In the hall that was now illuminated were several very large machines, all of which were equipped with wide and various controls and screens. One of them consisted of four columns lined up diagonally to a bed in the centre and lots of slide-able panels on the ground that could reveal more parts that could be directed at anyone on the bed. Various straps were attached to it, and it invoked painful memories in him. And around it were extendable, automatic operating devices.

This was the adaptation workbench, where you could adjust, install and de-install spells and magical components for 'adaptable skeletons'. Adaptable skeletons like him. His power converter, his Gaster-Nerator, his Gaster Blaster, his blue attack, this was where he got them all. On the other side stood an even bigger construct. At it's heart was a large, open glass cylinder, but it was surrounded by all sorts of antennae with rings of various colours, coils that were spun around the upper end of the cylinder, and turned-off beams aiming at it from opposite sides.

This was where the two prototypes for understanding the creation of artificial monsters were made. Tsundereplane and Yandereblender. He really had to check to see if the latter was still in capitivity. Tsundereplane was mostly harmless in comparison, but if Yandereblender ever escaped, that was something that could result in a bloodbath. And there were so many other things of a similar calibre here. These halls were really dark in many ways. It was good that all these machines were turned off.  
Alphys - still with a sparkle in her eyes, hasted towards the workbench "* What is this beautiful creation and where has it been all my life?" She stretched her arms as far as she could and was 'hugging' one of the edges of the console.

"* pretty cool, huh?"

"* Tell me! What does it! I've got to know!"

"* maybe next time. for now i just wanted ya to know i'm not bluffing when i say I got some stuff to show." When she was walking back to him, still slowly, but now for different reasons, she kept turning back around and squeaking with joy.

"* Show me..I'll do whatever it takes - I-I'll make that tricycle! It's gonna be the best, most stable one possible, but..."

"* chill. here's a reason why i'm showing you this. i've got all the gear and materials you could need for it here. i brought you here, so you'd believe me when i told you this. do you believe me?"

Nothing changed about her euphoria. She was supporting herself on both sides of his hoodie, bractically struggling not to grab him by it and keep begging to show her all of it or explain to her what these devices were. "* Yes! Yes I do but please show me more now."

He remained placid and walked back to the light switch. "* nope. nope, nope, nope, nope." She eventually dropped her arms in defeat and came back to him. "* that's a good one. c'mon, let's take that shortcut back." He kept talking as they walked back. "* forget the tricycle for now. a bit later, i'll get you all you need to make it."

After he turned off the light, he grabbed her hand again, went down the corridor and teleported them back to the parts of the lab that she knew. He walked back to the elevator in silence. He simply ignored her repeated attempts at persuading him to change his mind. He would show her more, when she needed to see more. And for the time being, she only needed to know that there was more.

Something that did surprise him though, was that they ran exactly into Undyne by leaving the elevator. "* He - wha... what were you two doing in the bathroom?" Undyne pointed at them with a disbelieving look and an open mouth. Her teeth showed even when she wasn't intentionally showing them.

Alphys started putting her claws together and sweating profusely. She was struggling to get an answer, so Sans just showed honesty. "* we were talking about bikes."  
Him taking this one relieved Alphys.

She pointed to him. "* Heh, y-yeah talking about bikes." She wasn't selling that very well.

But he had no intention to drop this one and let her off the hook so easily. He continued with a grin. "* we were gonna see if she could get me a bike to ride." He regularly checked both of their faces to not miss out. "* then we were gonna see if i could ride it really fast and rough." Alphys' sweating resumed and she started gnawing on her claws, while Undyne's confusion was turning into bottled anger. "* but then it got really nasty. the chain broke and the oil smeared around everywhere." Welp, his work here was done. Pacing backwards, he dodged Undyne's fist, left the lizard to deal with the steamed fish and giggled his way out of the lab.


	10. The most powerful beings on earth

The Monster King's Resolve

Chapter 10

The most powerful beings on earth

* * *

When they finally arrived, he held a hand over his face to get himself some time to get used to the still brigtht light of the afternoon sun. And as expected, once he opened his eyes, what he found himself surrounded by was perplexing. Not the planes and helicopters behind him, between which countless people were walking up and down, making adjustments to various devices or their aircraft. The humans had landed them all on a small part of the possible harbor that surrounded the entire area. "* So, Doctor, whatta we got?" Curly paced past him and shook hands with a man in a suit. His hair was grey but his hairline wasn't receding. A worried expression hung from his narrow-eyed face.

"* We spotted a life form, but it is giving us mixed signals. On one hand it speaks in a strange, infantile-sounding dialect and willingly let us contain it, but telling from what it's saying it seems somewhat hostile. Then it stopped communicating and...well I presume it would be best if you saw for yourselves."

They were led across a wide square. It was paved with rocks shaped and painted like round bar tabs with smaller ones to fill in the spaces in between. In the centre of the place was a fountain with statues made to depict a lengthy flying serpent spilling a steady stream of water from their mouth into a bottle. There was something to the left side that resembled a café looking out of a take-away box, but all the chairs and tables were upside-down and attached to the ground, so you couldn't turn them around. To their right stood a church with familiar smiley-faces for stained glasses and a clock tower, but the clock faces weren't on the tower, they were instead fixated outwardly by one corner of each clock face to one corner of the tower. To the left of the church was a pile of giant books with colourful covers and titles riddled with spelling errors and the building to it's right looked like an enormous, broken flower pot, with it's 'top' pointing to the square. "* I sincerely hope this contact of yours can make sense of this.", the elderly one added.

There were multiple large and open tents all around it, some white, some dark green. People in uniforms and lab coats walked up and down, some working with wide, pad-shaped computers, some patrolling up and down with rifles and others just walking from tent to tent carrying various pieces of equipment or setting out to leave the square through one of the many roads that led to the rest of the area.

They were led into a tent that was set up on the other side of the square. Around the tables on the left and right side of it lay all sorts of measuring, probing and scanning devices, but at the centre was a cage. A cage with a creature that Asgore already expected to see. She stood on all fours, had a mane of grey hair, two pairs of ears, wore a blue shirt and a helmet with a golden crescent on it's upper front side. She was only vibrating in place at first, sometimes even clipping ever so slightly out of the cage for a brief moment, until she saw Asgore and stopped. "* h0i Azgo! iM tEmmIe!"

Now he knew. His suspicion of where they had been going was confirmed. This was Temmentia, the lost city of the Tems. "* Howdy, Temmie."

"* bUTT! not jus n e tEM!" She raised a paw to point at her helmet. "* jEnneral tEmMIE!1 Yaya, tEmmie h0i rank."

The old man was relieved. "* Astounding, it seems to recognize you."

Temmie was fixated on Asgore. If she had just been vibrating in place for some time, he wondered whether she anticipated his arrival. Just how much did the Temmies know of what these humans were up to? "* teh hughmins tek tEm Ctay. humanz nid 2 go! dey n0t TEMs! dis is tEm l4nd."

Asgore turned to the humans, who were awkwardly standing behind him and seemed to expect him to work some sort of miracle. General Temmie was right. This wasn't a place that belonged to the humans. "* Pardon me, but I know what and who this is."

The doctor seemed overjoyed. He grabbed a notepad and a pen, apparently hoping to take notes of some sort. "* Splendid! Can you ask it how to open anything or extract anything we could reverse engineer?" He didn't seem to understand.

He knew that these people were really hopeful regarding this place. He didn't know how to put it. He tried by very carefully placing a hand at the elderly man's shoulder. "* I'm deeply sorry, but I'm afraid she's right. This place doesn't belong to you. You need to leave."

"* Yaya, he rite u know. u nid 2 go hoam."

Curly threw up his hands in defeat. "* Well that's just fantastic, the alien convinced our contact. I'll be outside." With this, he pushed one of the half-closed parts of the tent's entry aside and left.

The doctor didn't seem to lose his hope so quickly. With a slightly trembling hand, he raised another finger at Asgore with a look of anticipation. "* Could you make another attempt at reasoning with them? If necessary, I'll be leaving you two as well. I'm waiting outside or at the landing area if you make any progress." He picked up a suitcase and a bag from the corner and left the tent as well.

"* nao dat u r heer, u can convinss humanz 2 go yes?" When he turned around, she was vibrating her open-mouthed face off her head, out of the cage and straight in his direction. "* u no weer srs about dis."

Asgore took a deep breath, followed the retracting face and sat down in front of the cage. He had been to New Temmentia in his time. It was an entire city, with parks, residential areas, an enormous college campus, industrial districts, artificial lighting that looked a lot more like sunlight than anything they had in the underground, anything you could imagine and he hadn't even ventured that far into it. And when you left, it looked like it was just a little hut behind an expandable crack in the northern wall of Temmie Village. When in use, this place probably had similar properties. "* What are you expecting me to do? They think they can use something from here as a weapon for some sort of inactive war."

"* Yaya, tEM haf many grate thins. buT not 4 humanz. Go tell humanz dei haf no chanss agenst tEmmie. tEmmie ossum and haf much resoorcs."

It wasn't like he could say no to her careless demeanour her happy-go-lucky smiles, but the circumstances just seemed to make what she was asking for impossible or very hard. "* u monstEr king nono? go do da dooties an' tell teh humanz."

He had to follow suit. At least try his best to resolve this. He knew the Temmies wouldn't take any less than all of their city and yet the humans seemed very eager to get something out of this. All he could hope for was that they were eager, but not as dead set to get their way as the Temmies were. He left the tent and paced outside, the people in his path quickly stepping aside upon noticing his probably imposing frame rush along. "* Stop! Listen, both of you" He ran after them and raised his hand, trying to beckon them to stop for him again. "* She isn't wrong, this place belongs to the Temmies. They were freed with us when the barrier was removed. You've got to understand that you're intruding on their..."

Curly interrupted him and raised both his hands in indifference while still slowly backing off. "* Look, I gotta get something to show or I can't bother to show up at HQ."

It seemed necessary to speak with a slightly more raised voice. "* The Temmies created this place. You acknowledged that you can learn from it, so you know it is to some degree superior to your machines. Do you really think they're as harmless as she is pretending to be? This is their kind of diplomacy. Do you really want to make them angry?"

They looked at each other, and from what it seemed, they were still not taking this situation seriously. Curly tilted his head to the side with a look of suspicion on his face. "* Is this some kinda threat?"

"* How can I threaten something that I have no control over? If you don't believe me, ask her."

"* I'm outta here. Come back when you talked some sense into the thing. Or beat some sense into it, I dunno."

"* I do beg your pardon?" It was good to see that the elderly man didn't share the agent's attitude. He turned back to Asgore in shame. "* I'm sorry that you had to hear that."

Asgore just smiled. "* I can tell that there are differences even among you. But please, if you don't believe me, come back and ask Temmie to tell you that she's serious."

The old man sighed, but agreed. "* Fair enough, I'll give it one more try. Say, would a bargain work?"

"* A bargain? You mean like a compromise? Trying to create a need for an amicable agreement and use it to leverage more from them than they're otherwise willing to accept? Temmies don't fall for that kind of trickery. They don't make compromises."

When they walked back into the tent, Temmie's mouth was looking at them anxiously, her face vibrating and drops of sweat running down both sides. "* Did Azgo mek peas with humanz? Will humanz go nao?" She sniffed. "* Temmie so moevd. Tank u"

The king shook his head. "* I'm afraid not."

The doctor moved past him and hunkered down in front of the cage. "* Say, little one. Your friend thinks you to be quite impressive."

At once, Temmie's spirits were up again. She smiled and gave him a wink. "* Yaya Temmie haf many tins! Humanz wanna mek frenz with tEm. Othawyze tEms vewy angry."

"* Awww." Not good, he really wasn't understanding. The deluded man stretched a hand into the cage and ran it over Temmie's mane. "* This is so cute. What will Temmie do when she's angry?"

She went back to shaking her face left and right with tears or sweat drops streaming down her face. "* tEmmie just want tEmmie land back for Temmiy. U dont no how dat iz? U haf no human contrey 4 humanz?"

The old man tilted backwards. Finally he was showing a modicum of respect. "* Uh, you know...when people come to ours...we share..."

All of a sudden, Temmie stopped, turned silent and raised her head so as to 'look down' on them from her perspective. With a very forced-looking, pulled-up smile she answered: "* That's your own fault then." with a now clear and cold voice. "* As for you..." She shuffled over to face Asgore. "* Don't say we didn't try being nice."

"* No...wait..." He moved closer to her, hoping to stall or somehow convince her to try a little longer, but she was already vanishing in a dispersing cloud of purple shining sparkles. He closed his eyes. "* Oh god, what have you done?" A cold shadow creeped up his back. This was not good. This was absolutely not good.

The human looked up at him in confusion while getting up. "* It could do this whole time?" Humans were really easily fooled by the Temmies' theatrics. The concerned boss monster stepped back outside without a word. The only thing he could hope for, was that the only exit from the underground being this rather narrow frame behind the throne room was a sufficient hindrance to the Temmies. On the other hand who was he trying to fool? He had seen some of the things they were capable of.

High above the city, as if it was passing through an invisible veil of sorts, a huge object manifested right above the square, casting a shadow over it's entirety. Rows of three water mills stuck out on each side, but a bicycle wheel hung from each bar at their outsides. The main cluster of it's shape was made up to look like a giant shoe box that was covered in sandwiches of different forms. Towards the lower end of it, four movable spotlights were attached, but none of them were turned on, and the bottom of the shoe box was mounted on an upside-down plate, probably to help with landings. At it's centre, more and more visible as it lowered itself down over the buildings at the side of the square, was a huge screen, on which the familiar, wide-smiling face of a Temmie with a helmet was displayed.

"* h0i! 1m jennerull tEM and dis is TEM Fortress. An' we tek tem contrey back!" Further above, from blue and red backpacks on the left and right side of the shoebox came about eight to ten flying objects, that looked like fighter planes from the distance and spiraled down around the floating structure they had left from. "* hoomins tink dey soo clevar. tink u can jus ignoar tEmmie and tek TEM ctey? U tink hoominz r byond consekwens?" As one of them soared straight past the two with a loud droning noise coming from them, Asgore could quickly tell that they were actually Temmies in a special suit of sorts that flashed in any sunlight it got. "* Red Tem coptars! Blu Tem plaens!", General Temmie commanded.

A few humans standing nearby ducked at first, but when the Temmies had rushed past them, quickly drew their firearms and fired all that they had. But judging from the sparks and a few of the projectiles, he could tell that they simply bounced off this Temmie armor. "* Humanz cow-er in pheer of TEMPIRE! Human presents will onley be TEMporary!" Asgore and the elderly human, at least as far as the latter's constitution would allow it, tried to run after them to see what was going on. Others were following them, now streaming in from all street corners, but everyone soon came to a halt, when they saw that there was nothing anyone could do.

The Temmies in their power suits came to a stop flying mid-air above and around all the planes and helicopters that the humans had used to land here. One was already trying to take off, but was shot down before it could even get off the platform. Specifically, it's propellers were pierced by rays of solid red light, followed by explosions destroying the parts that were crucial to it's flying capacity. One of the Temmies had 'transformed'. Their arms and legs were long enough to roughly mimic a human body, and they held a ranged weapon in their hands with which they had fired the beams. One by one, still under constant human gunfire with no effect, all the flying Temmies extended their limbs in the same way, readied the same kind of weapon and fired those same rays at all turbines and propellers on the platform, until not one functional human means of escape was left.

After they switched back to their small form again, they sped off into the air, until they gradually started flying a wide circle around all the surrounding area that was likely to bear any humans. One of the helicopters, presumably a military machine, had rockets mounted at it's sides and released a few of them, which took an automatic turn upwards to fly straight towards the floating battle station. But before they got anywhere near it, they impacted and exploded as if there was an invisible wall protecting their target. General Temmie just smiled with a wide open mouth and winked at the desperate people below. "* Yaya - human wponz uesless agenst TEM!"

The old human was pulling at Asgore's cape. "* There has got to be something you can do!", he shouted against the noise that was coming from whatever the Temmies were using to fly around and so quickly.

Maybe he could. He tried one more time, taking a few steps to clearly face the screen and shout from the bottom of his lungs. "* Temmies! Cease your assault! There has to be another way!"

But it was to no avail. "* humanz weer allaoud 2 stay. humanz weer axed 2 leaf and humanz refoosd. NAO ITS TEM TIM!" The noise was getting louder and higher in it's pitch. More and more humans, and soon Asgore too covered their ears. The Temmies that flew in that far-away circle were flying it faster and faster at speeds he didn't hink possible, until they broke formation and split into all directions with a shrill sound, just before everything was enveloped in a blinding light and Asgore lost consciousness.

* * *

He woke up with a headache, and from what his feet told him, a rough, rocky ground. In one direction, he could hear regular drops of water falling down somewhere. He held his head with one hand, while supporting himself with the other to get up. The Temmies, what did thez do? They must have knocked him out somehow. Having kept them closed tight before, he opened his eyes to look around. He was in a little cave of sorts. He could see green grass and a distant forest to his right. In front of him lay William, still lying on the ground. Something that relieved him was, that his crown was lying on the ground next to him. Along with the suitcase from Andrew.

A few seconds after he got up completely, William woke up. "* ...what? What happened?" He knew he couldn't see yet, but he helped him up regardless. "* Mr. Dreemurr?" He must have felt the fur or the claws on his hand. Or maybe he could just tell from the size.

"* Yes."

The disoriented representative was still dangling in place. "* What happened? We were flying to some place the Center wanted us to go and then...it just stops there."

He was interrupted. "* h0i!" A Temmie stepped in sight from the right of the cave's entrance. "* i'm tEmmie! tEmmie found human and monster in caev. Must hav bin very sleapey." She pranced along and around Asgore's feet. "* tEmmie tinks human and monstar walk to big hooman ctey, butt dat meks no sanse. Y not ues trayne or car?"  
"* h0i! IM tEmmie!" Another Temmie stepped forward from aside the cave. "* h0i" Another one. "* h0i" More and more, the casually moving Temmies flooded the cave, until all you could see when looking down on the ground were their identical heads and pairs of ears, together with all manner of smiles, winks, laughs, repetitive greetings surrounding them.

The human was opening his eyes. "* What? What are these! Asgore help!" They were still streaming in, they simply made it possible by starting to walk on each others' backs. Did William not remember what happened? Even if he stayed back in the plane, the face of General Temmie must have been visible on the screen and her voice was broadcast way too loudly for anyone not to hear and recognize it.

He decided to go along with it. "* They are Temmies. Don't worry, they are harmless."

William was still grasping his scalp in pain. The incessant chatting of the Temmies, both with each other, and commenting on the two of them with things like "* Wauz! U 2 lok intresting!" was wearing down on the man.

"* This is too much. I've got to get out of here." He stepped forward, and upon seeing that the Temmies made space in his immediate way, he started walking to the exit faster and faster, pushing the now triple-stacked Temmies aside when he needed to. But they wouldn't leave him alone, some of the four-fold stacks of Temmies would walk after him, singing a familiar song of 'Bum' and 'Do' as a coordinated acapella. The king thought about following him, but two Temmies placed a paw each on his feet and shook their heads. This play of talking non-stop en masse and driving the human away with their singing continued until he was so far away, he would have been out of hearing range, even if none of the Temmies were here.

The Temmies that surrounded Asgore were still talking in the area of the cave's exit, but in his immediate vicinity, they stopped. Except for one. "* He doesn't remember a thing. None of them do." They were alive? Asgore was overjoyed to hear this. So he wouldn't have to deal with the consequences of this. No Monster-Human conflict over Temmentia. The war was averted once again.

"* You didn't kill them..."

The Temmie raised an eyebrow. "* We sent them back to the country they came from. This...Merkantilia. A very confusing nation. We're removing all records of our home right now. The humans there look a lot more like they do here, than they used to. But they've also advanced scientifically much faster like this. Maybe it was for the better."

"* The same is being done to those humans now..."

"* We know. And that is certainly not for the better. We will help dismantle the Orcs sooner or later. But until we do, you will need this." She tilted her head to the side, pointing him to another Temmie that held a tiny contraption in her mouth. Asgore reached down and took it. It barely fit in his hand, he was holding it with only his thumb and index finger and was already afraid he could break it. "* The TEM BLOCK. Place it into the little compartment in the front." He was wondering which one he meant. But it dawned on him which one.

With hesitation, he pointed at the round one between the wings on his chest. "* Yes. The picture only makes you cry. This will save your life. You WILL need it. This is not a discussion." It felt strange seeing a Temmie look so serious. Usually even when breaking character, they maintained a slight pretense of lightheartedness. All that was gone from her face. From a lot of them. "* This is serious. Do it." He really didn't want to, but who was he to object to the Temmies. You never knew what it was that they knew, so he obliged. He opened it, kept the picture of Asriel in his hand, and put the strange object inside, before closing and locking it again. "* Thank you. And one more thing. The human...take him along but not a word to him about us. Who knows who his allegiance lies with when it comes down to it. Us? His own kind? His donors? He's more trustworthy than most, but anything can happen."

After seeing her smile again, he noticed that they were starting to sing the same song as the others. The same one as they always did. The song of Temmie Village. And everyone joined in to sing it in a loud choir while leaving the cave again. Prancing outside one stack at a time, never stopping their chant. As he followed the slowly dispersing monsters, he soon found himself marching the rhythm. It didn't matter how repetitive or annoying it got, it was always catchy.  
Further outside, beyond the wide field of recently rained-on grass, William was resting on a rock looking on his visibly more advanced phone, occasionally looking up to the forest in front of him. Further in the distance, you could see a road leading out of it. The night sky was covered in clouds. Quite some time must have passed. He asked him.

"* Can this thing tell you where we are?" Without a word, William pointed the screen to Asgore's face, it displayed a map. And only a town and a few villages to the southeast of the marker that was probably the own position was Farfoot Village.

As if on command, his cell phone rang. A slightly coarse voice spoke on the other side. "* Temmie?"

"* Undyne?"

"* Asgore!" She sounded very relieved. "* Where've you been? We've been calling you over and over, but Temmie kept picking up the phone and she insisted you were fine every time. I was...we were worried."

He didn't even really answer. He just laughed at the entire day he had gone through. It was finally over. Only the home stretch from here. "* Asgore? Is everything okay?" She hadn't seen or heard any of the things he saw.

"* Yes, Undyne. Everything is alright. I might come home with very good news..." He told her about what had happened in the Grand Capital, but he limited what happened later to saying he had met some Temmies. He gave the poor man a little time to rest, but he soon tapped William on the back and urged him to get up. "* Chop chop, it's only going back from here is it not?" He nodded and followed. Asgore already knew how to come back. At least if Toriel and the others still had that minibus. But first, he needed to get to civilization, some place with street names. Even if they hadn't there was still a backup plan.

As they walked along the roadway, occasionally noticing a car stopping by, but none of them big enough for Asgore to bother asking, he noticed that the faint singing of the Temmies wasn't fading out completely, in fact it was coming closer again. Before he knew it, two crowds of Temmies were already catching up from both sides of the Asgore and William. He couldn't hold back a grin noticing that he was bothered by the obnoxious choir that was following them. If he wanted to devote his time to helping monsters, he had to get used to it eventually. He didn't ask them to stop. He smiled at William and joined in. "* Not you too!"

It soon started to rain, which didn't cause their melodious march to falter the least bit. With the end not in sight yet, William eventually got around to joining in as well, as they doodled onward through the rain, Asgore accompanying every step they made with his deep voice. They crossed bridges, saw a bit of a thicket to their right, and once they passed a few large metal constructs with cables connecting them, they soon reached a town that they were leading to. And once they reached the pavements, without him even seeing how or where to, the Temmies' song faded out, and upon turning around, he found them to have vanished.

* * *

It was cold. And there was no-one outside. Sure the song of the Temmies was obnoxious, but at least it passed the time. In the dead silence of the night, minutes seemed like an eternity. No cars passing by, not even the crawling or rustling of an animal was in hearing range. Save for the constant patter of rain, all that there was to this place was the silent image of grey walls and roads to all sides inwards, illuminated by vapid white light. It was like the area was dead, but the boss monster knew that it was was merely in slumber.

The rain felt extremely uncomfortable wherever his fur was soaked. William had it even worse. He wasn't wearing any armor. All his clothes were probably sticking onto his skin and froze him more than Asgore. He was wondering what he should do. He could just take the easy way out, but Sans would probably prefer if he took it the slow way and didn't ask him to be too obvious about the things he could do. Asgore looked around and thought of something he could do. He didn't need him to be too obvious, but maybe there was a way to make their wait a little more bearable. "* Hey, I've got to make another phone call. It's rather personal."

He didn't even need to go on, the shivering human just nodded and gestured him to go with a hasty wave of the hand. It was of course not really that personal. He went just two houses further away, still at the outer corner, and called Sans. He gave him his address and told him about the only took about a quarter of an hour of standing there, regularly checking if William was alright and waiting, until Sans arrived with a few umbrellas and left right away again. It was good that he figured one umbrella wouldn't cover much of Asgore and brought more than two. "* Hey, look what I found." William showed no hesitation to accept this and took one of them. "* Good gracious, thank you. Where'd you find them?"

With something covering him at last, he started squeezing the water out of his clothes wherever he could.

"* I found a stand in the corner. Really convenient." He raised his eyebrows and checked if William questioned it, but he didn't seem to care at this point."* Yes, a miracle." He was shivering so strongly, you could hear it in every word he said. "* This is so much better..."

It was good to see that he was warming up again. He wasn't sure how long they would be waiting. He summoned a little flame in his hand and held it closer for William to warm himself on. It almost faded as it passed through the rain until it got under another umbrella. "* So is this...magic?" His new-found friend had finally gotten warm enough to stand calmly, Asgore thought it was a good opportunity to talk. "* Say, just before you told me that the humans would protect us, you seemed like you wanted to say something...what was that?"

He waved that off. "* Oh it's nothing it's..." He turned to look at the empty roads once again. They really were alone. "* Yes, it is something. I'm going to put it this way. Things aren't as comfortable as what people say in public will make it seem. At least not if you're a human. I walk out of the house every day, knowing that on this day I might not come back alive. If I'm lucky, I lose my purse, if I'm not so lucky, I lose my life. They're killing us wherever they can get away with it, but we can't really talk about that without getting defamed and stripped of our careers. All we can do is live life as if everything was alright, until it's each of our turn."

"* Then call the police!"

"* Told you before, police just refuse to help. Besides, even for the arrests they make, they release suspects without even investigating and then you can count on getting tailed and cornered again soon."

"* Then defend yourselves."

His eyes narrowed in disbelief. "* You think they really risk attacking us one by one? They're not that much bigger."

"* Then arm yourselves."

"* Oh yes, fending off three or more Orcs with a spear, I', sure that's going to go well."

"* I meant properly. Those modern human weapons."

William couldn't suppress a little laugh and just shook his head and threw a narrow-eyed look at Asgore that made it seem like he had said something very silly. "* That kind of arming ourselves is against the law. Owning something like a sword, maybe - it's still illegal but no-one gets arrested for that." But Asgore found what he heard to be what sounded silly.

"* This is ridiculous. If this is true, how does any of it make sense?"

"* Doesn't it? Or does it only not make sense with the wrong assumptions?" Asgore was confused by this. He tilted his head in a questioning manner. "* What do you think why I was with the Sovereigns? The reason is that they're not wrong. At least it seems more and more like they're not. This system, the official channels and institutions only makes no sense if you assume it's intention to be to maintain stability, order, or simply to enforce the law. Maybe it even was in the past. But right now..." He looked back at the king, and it seemed he could tell that Asgore wasn't understanding where he was going with this. He gave up explaining it to him. Either that or he was already done and Asgore hadn't understood. "* Look, all of this is happening very slowly. Don't bother trying to take it all in at once, you'll notice soon enough. "

No. He shook his head. He wasn't going to accept this. "* Assuming this is all true, why? Why is this happening? This doesn't sound like a legal system, this sounds like someone is making an attempt at your existence!" He caught himself getting louder and louder. William was looking at him. There was a hint of fear in his eyes. He had to control himself better. "* Who would? And how much treason from your own kind would be necessary to allow for all this to be kept up?" But William didn't answer. He looked straight in his eyes as if trying to say something without saying it, but he didn't utter a single word. He soon faced away, back to the road they had followed.

What was he not telling him? Except after maybe half an hour of silence, he did answer. He didn't even turn to him. He kept his face away. "* At some point, I just gave up. Too many humans willingly participate in making this worse. I couldn't defeat the system, so I became a part of it. I'm doing my part by doing what I can to help you lot right now. It would be better for all of you if you got around to doing yours as well. There's no point in swimming against the stream. I'm not even sure why I'm doing anything any more. This world is pointless." And no matter what Asgore said from then on in, whatever words he tried to put together to cheer him up, William would neither move an inch nor say a word, until the two of them heard the uplifting sounds of rubber grinding on concrete and the motor of a large vehicle.

"* Did someone order a taxi?" Undyne looked out of the wound-down window with a wide grin and William rushed to the door and got in as fast as they could. His friends, they had all come for him. All of them. Even Frisk, though still a child that should be long sleeping at this time of night, seemed to have gotten up to come and pick him up. All of them except one. He just suppressed this constricting feeling in his spine. What did he expect after all? He just closed his eyes, took a deep breath and focused on those that did come for him. "* My friends, thank you."

But what he first had to do was turn to Frisk. "* Howdy. Tell me, child. This is no time for a boy your age to be awake, why are you not in bed?"

"* The phone woke me up and Mom wasn't at home."

"* Worrying. Where could she have gone? Why didn't you call her?" Wait a second..."* You sneaky little boy. You knew she wouldn't let you come here if you told."

Frisk smiled. Asgore himself couldn't suppress a chuckle as he ruffled the child's hair. He interrupted Undyne as she wanted to tell the man at the steering wheel to take them back home. "* One more thing, William." He pointed at the case. "* He said it needs a bank. Are banks open now?"

William, now very willingly squeezed between Alphys and Papyrus with a visible degree of comfort due to how dry and warm it was in here, shrugged. "* Not if you want to open an account. And I doubt you already...have you?"

"* No." In that case, that had to wait. Asgore gave Undyne a go on taking them home. "* Frisk." He knelt down to talk to him eye to eye again. "* Your mother will be very worried if she comes back and finds you to be gone." He was sneaky, but not malicious. He took out his phone and called her to tell her where he was right away.

"* Mom?...We went to pick up Dad...the phone woke me up...the station? Why?...Yes...yes...okay..." It appeared that their conversation ended. "* Mom was going to the train station, but she's on the way back." Why indeed? Other than that, the ride back was eventless. He expected to be pestered with questions, but apparently everyone was as exhausted as he and William were.

To their surprise, when they were reaching the path up to the entrance, a recognizable large silhouette appeared walking in the same direction. Undyne seemed hard pressed to resist winding down the window and looking out again. "* Hey, want a ride?"

For some reason, Toriel was startled, and looked back at her for a few seconds, before she - with strange hesitation - decided to enter the slid-aside door. Now that they were one more than this morning, the place was getting more cramped than before.

"* Actually..." Asgore turned around to address everyone here. "* Now that we are all together again, what would you say if we spent another night on the surface?" No-one seemed to object. But Toriel seemed a bit more...unresponsive, even more so than usually.

"* Golly, Sir, would you please take us to Miarim Inn? "

The agent abliged. "* Miarim Inn coming up." He typed the name on a little display that was built into it. When they arrived, the humans locked the vehicle behind the monster and spurted ahead to order rooms of their own. Judging from what was being said, he was just holding out until he was to receive new orders from their headquarters, when the monsters arrived at the counter though, Asgore was a bit surprised.

"* Ah, hello Sir." The same page as yesterday, albeit not nearly as terrified as last time and a lot more well rested. "* Your little friend brought something by for you." He hasted into the back and heaved a bar of solid gold to drop it onto the counter.

"* No, this was for you..." The young man chuckled. "* I'm sorry, sir. But we can't just take gold as payment. Accounting, you know. It's all currency numbers. Can't just book the revenue as 'paid in solid gold. "

More complications. Of course. He would have to deal with this later. "* Just keep it for the time being. I'm sure the word 'assurance' has meaning even today." He watched the others each walk up once they received their keys, until he himself did and could finally enter his own room, with new tray on the table in the corner just as last night, and an empty but made bed.

At last he could lock the door and in the safety of it, take off his armor and lean back to sink into the softness of a double bed had a lot of things on his mind. Even more than last night. He had cast away the notions, but he knew ahead of time that there would be many challenges to face when they were finally free. But he now knew that there was one great challenge among the first, and that challenge was to get through the first day. That challenge was faced with success. No-one got hurt, and they weren't cast back to the underground. Even if he was still dirty and sweaty, drifting off into a deep sleep was a breeze.

* * *

"Temmie. This name summarizes these small creatures. They may seem rather alien at first, seeing as they never go anywhere alone, but they're harmless and you have nothing to fear from them. They live in Temmie village, where they live ordinary lives of simple-minded monsters like so many others..."

"doc..."

" **They're harmless, four-legged creatures and that is all there is to them**!"

"okay, okay, sure..."

"Ugh...Sans...Well, there might be a few minor details about them, it's just that...let me just turn on this...and then finish putting the last set ... of blinds...down..okay. So, the truth is, that all of their funny sentences and innocent demeanour is just an act and actually, they're highly organized and scientifically advanced to a degree that none of us can comprehend. If they show you a shed, you might walk into it and it's just a shed, but if they trust you, you'll find an entire city of massive scale. All the technology of everything I have built upon came from the Temmies. All the way to the DT Extraction Machine. Truth be told, I had to rename it, the original name was 'HUM SOL SUK'. I don't like the way they name things.

Even my time machine would have never been possible without their help. It is ridiculous how many renegade Temmies are travelling across the universe in inconspicuously-looking spaceships much like my upgraded time machine and just observe the course of history. If I think of all the dangers I've been through, without them helping once, it's pretty certain that they really don't step in unless they determine that they need to. So don't go asking them for help with our problems."

"Wait, wait wait, you're telling me they could travel through time the whole time?"

"Yes."

"We could have left the Underground any time!"

"Alphys, I've stopped questioning their motives a long time ago and they probably wouldn't make sense to any of us anyway. Just know that nothing lies beyond their capability and for the love of anything that is holy don't tell anyone anything other than those of us here that they're perfectly harmless, simple and cute creatures with nothing more than a little village. To no-one. Friends, family, doesn't matter. If people who shouldn't know find out, they will 'be made to forget' it and then you will 'be made to forget', too. Just bear in mind that nothing is as stupid as to try and get into conflict with a TEM lord. People who do that just so happen to have never been born. Now to turn off the jammer...and that is how the Temmies managed to build a statue of a Temmie to display for everyone."


	11. The Hostile Invaders

The Monster King's Resolve

Chapter 11

The Hostile Invaders

* * *

"Bergentrückung. A word that future scholars will attribute all sorts of meanings to. Tales of kings that retreat to mountains until the time of their rise comes, stories of kings and other people heading to mountains to then ascend to heaven, some even get as close to believing it's about our King waiting at the gate to the barrier for a human to allow for him to rise up from the underground. While these interpretations seem more plausible at first and have a lot more gravitas to them, the true meaning of the word is much more silly and much more banale.

You see, back when we were all on the surface and most of us still quite young, Asgore, our prince at the time, had the annoying habit of taking this northern language that everyone associates with Elves nowadays, and using it to make up silly names for all of his and his friends' strongest magic attacks. There was Toriel's Sonnenstoß or Solar Burst, Gerson's Panzerschmetterer or Shell Smash, Neferias' Knochengolem - to us Bonegolem and last but not least, his own Bergentrückung."

"WHAT ABOUT Y..."

"Yes?"

"UH...NEVERMIND."

"Well okay - now his Bergentrückung leads us to the next point about Boss Monsters. Men and women are not disconnected entities that compete with one another, they are a unit. And much more than already for anyone else, this goes for boss monsters. When two boss monsters conceive a child for the first time, they create a magic connection with each other which they need to create the soul of their offspring and help their offspring survive it's early years by funneling life energy to it. That is what makes them grow and age in adulthood. Now, the part that people who aren't boss monsters often forget is...Alphys! Snap out of it!"

"Ow - yes I'm listening! I'm listening!"

"Okay. The part that people who aren't boss monsters often forget is that that connection remains. It doesn't go away. Actually, it never goes away. It would take one of both dying and years passing before any changes would occur. The connection has a lot of effects on both. For instance, one instinct they've developed from living in a cold, hostile environment, where getting into trouble without someone coming for help meant certain death, is that whenever one of both feels that they are under a genuine threat of death, the other will and cannot resist trying to get to them. What excuses and reasons they provide for it in the aftermath varies, but this is a universal instinct that is practically impossible to suppress.

Another, more important one here is how it affects their elemental magic. Of course all monsters have a natural type of magic that they can use without studying and learning to consciously cast it. For us, it would be the summoning of bones - for you, lightning. But for boss monsters, it varies. They use a wide range of elemental magic, but in most cases, it's limited to the same old four. Earth, fire, water and air. Toriel's element has from birth on been fire. But there is one element that boss monsters avoid using in the underground like the plague. I presume from the name 'Mountain Rapture', it should be fairly obvious, which one."

* * *

He tried to move forward on the path. He had to get home, and pass this died-down place. The colourless silhouettes that were all he could see in the dark of the night were dwelling in the dull grey of the dim moonlight from above. It was strenuous enough as it was to place one foot before the other, but the road was starting to shift in small waves under dreadful cracks of solid pavement breaking and reforming, and it only got more and more vehement by the second. Before long, everything around him was shaking. He wouldn't budge. He kept pushing forward and striving to his goal. In faint distance he could hear a voice calling, but he couldn't make out where it was coming from. "* hey buddy...big guy?" Whoever was going to ask for anything now could wait, he needed to get back. "* ...your highness?..." His people needed him. He couldn't afford to let them down, not again. The path he was travelling through was erupting even more under the increasingly loud voice. "* time's running out, you want breakfast, right?" At first, he thought something was ripping him from the place, but once his eyes shot open, he realized that the road wasn't collapsing at all. In fact, he wasn't at any road. Asgore lay in his bed and a little skeleton was rocking his right shoulder back and forth, trying to wake him up. "* there we go."

The still groggy boss monster stretched his arms to wake up properly. The sun was shining in through the window and casting a silhouette of it on the floor. Where the sunlight ran through, you could see the dust float about. "* won't be much there if you milk every moment just to loaf around." That was it, he pressed himself up at an increasing speed.

"* All right, all right, no need to jam up my ears." Sans' eyes widened with joy before he gave Asgore a wink. "* Wait, before you go." He got up, headed over to the table and picked up the case. "* You have breakfast yet?" Sans nodded. "* Okay, I want you to take this and stow it away." Without a word, he accepted it and disappeared. Disappeared in terms of disappearing. The door was locked and remained locked. Sans was right though. Time to get a move on. He didn't neglect preparing to walk downstairs with a clean coat of fur, but he didn't take his time with it this time.

He was much more rested than yesterday morning. The additional hours of sleep showed and he must have slept much better than last time. When arriving downstairs, he could already see another crowd assembled right outside of the hotel's wide-open entrance door. They were standing around the skeletons with lights flashing and police this time being there to maintain a distance between the monsters and their interviewers. It appeared he was gaining the confidence to become an ambassador of sorts after all.

"IT WAS THE HUMAN THAT FREED US!"

Sans was already back, and apparently no-one noticed that he was gone. "* they're all humans, pap. you've gotta be more specific."

"WHY, FRISK OF COURSE. THE ONLY HUMAN THAT ACCOMPANIES US."

He trusted them to handle this responsibly. The agent that was driving them around the day before, was still with them at the table that they all sat together one last time. But when Asgore got two chairs to sit at the table with them, Toriel finished up and left to join the others with Frisk.

He remembered to go easy on it on one hand, but on the other, he only had one meal in an entire day, so there was no danger of things getting uncomfortable in that regard. Most of the other people here were either gone or leaving. A senior couple turned around to watch, when they noticed that Toriel and the child were getting up. It was unavoidable but hard not to notice, how much attention it drew whenever there was movement at or from their table. The agent soon too got up after finishing a bowl of cereals. William just sat back in his chair and watched Asgore eat. "* So what exactly happened yesterday?"

The hungry boss monster kept peeling and cutting his orange apart. "* I have as little of an idea as you do."

Williams eyebrows lowered themselves. He didn't seem to quite buy it. "* Those creatures where we woke up, you knew what they were, and when we were in the plane..." He took a sip from his fruit juice. "* ...correct me if I'm wrong, but you sounded like you had an idea what we were getting into. You know, on the way to that place." Apparently, the Temmies weren't as thorough with him as Asgore had thought. Probably because they wanted him to wake up together with him. Or maybe, they trusted him a little more than those from abroad.

"* They're Temmies. Small, harmless monsters from the underground. They have a few - collective spleens. I think that describes it quite well."

"* Then if you know these Temmies...are you sure they have nothing to...it's just that they're the only thing to go by." He wasn't going to let this go, was he? "* Look, the people that were bringing us there aren't the kind of people you want trouble with. They will contact me and they will want answers. And the one most likely to give me anything is you."

He did have a point. But Asgore couldn't just give him information he wasn't supposed to have, could he? He gave an audible snort to express his impatience while not even looking up from tearing off the last bit. "* Just tell them exactly what you remember. We were flying wherever we were flying to, and then you woke up outside." He felt the human's look not turn from him for a second. He could somehow tell that Asgore knew something. He would have to deal with his curiosity later.

But after a while, he let it go and sat back. "* All right. Guess that will have to be enough."

A look on the clock at the partial wall between the kitchen that was built for human size and the dining room that had the hotel's trademark boss monster size, revealed that they only had five more minutes any way. He quickly finished up and put his dishes back to follow the others. Outside. A few of the people were already leaving, having collected enough footage for the time being. A few of them came back upon noticing that the king was stepping forward, back into the warm light of the summer sun.

"* Mr. Dreemurr - what is your opinion on the real estate course? Is it a bubble or is there a reason..."

"* Do you condemn the viscious verbal attacks on Troughton's Orc refuge?"

"* What do you estimate for your settlement's size?"

He raised his hands in defeat. "* Please, please, spare me. Our ambassador here surely has answered enough of your questions." The others were moving on with William to head to the vehicle. Still surrounded by journalists following them on every step, Asgore stood in place for a moment, gesturing the policemen and cameramen to open up a path for him to go through. But before he could give them too much time for that, to his right, something caught his attention. Around a corner behind a residence came a very erratically moving silhouette of a human woman in her thirties and navigated past the many vans with the brands of various news channels on them. Her blonde hair was completely tousled and she was screaming repeatedly from the top of her lungs. "* Monsters! Help! Monsters!"

Asgore was about to pass the police officers to break through the crowd and make for the vehicle. The others were still waiting for him, but he wanted to know what this was about. She was unarmed as far as he could tell and clearly on the way here, as once she passed through between the two stone walls, she disregarded the minibus full of other monsters and made straight for the king. "* Please, I beg you, help me!" She was dissolved and completely in tears. The journalists were hesitant to turn around and most cameras and microphones stayed put in Asgore's direction. But at the same time, it didn't seem like they were going to let her through.

Asgore gestured them to move aside. "* Please, let her through or I will remember that you didn't next time you ask any questions." This did prompt them to break up and open a breach for her to push through after all, at least up to the point where the police were separating the reporters from him. "* They got my little Darren! Please, you're the monster's leader are you?"

She was in panic and desperation at the same time. She was muttering more and more, but it was hard to keep track of the half-sentences that followed. He eventually just stretched out an open hand and slowly moved it in her direction. "* I need you to tell me what it is. Who has your child, and how can I help?" One of the policemen picked out a communication device of sorts and spoke into it, saying that they might need assistance. The cameras were turning to face her, as were the microphones.

She needed to stop and take some heavy breaths, just so she could speak in coherent sentences. "* The Orcs have my little boy! They say to bring them the monsters' leader or they'll..." She broke together, covering her eyes and crying again. The moment she uttered the word 'Orcs', all journalists lowered and turned off their cameras and dissolved their crowd with all of them heading back out. He did hear one of them say something to "* Orcs? We can't run that.." as they gained distance.

"* Officers! Can't you do something too?" Her voice was shaky and there was a whimper in everything she said. She looked at the policemen that were already breaking up and leaving as well.

They didn't seem to be too bothered by her talking to them, but at some point when they were already off the hotel's property, one of them turned around and gave her a tired response. "* Sorry, Lady. There's no-one available right now." With this, they headed back to their police cars and drove away as well.

Asgore couldn't help but shout at these people, walking back with their white feather showing. "* But you were right here just now? How can you not be available? You have a duty do you not? This woman is in need of help!" But they just kept going with none of them looking back. It seemed he was on his own. "* Tell me, woman. Where are these Orcs and what can I do to help?"

"* They were holding us and now they still got her! I don't know what to do without my little boy - he's my everything - I'm begging you..."

He pushed her put-together hands back down. "* You already have my assistance. Show me where they are."

She was finally calming down. She was still trembling, but at least she could have her voice cease from time to time. "* Up the hill on the fields down this road! This way!" He couldn't let this woman down. He feared that something like this might happen soon, given the things William told him, but he didn't know they would happen this soon.

The other monsters were leaving the minibus again and as he neared it, to pass it to get outside of the premises, a startling furred hand with claws at the ends of it's fingers pulled him back at his left arm. "* No." He stopped and turned around to Toriel. "* Don't do it. Whatever it is you plan on doing, don't." She knew him too well. She must have seen his intent in his eyes. Maybe even felt it somehow.

The human woman was already running back and trying to pull him by his right arm. "* Please, I couldn't live with myself if anything happened to him!"

"* Don't do it, Dreemurr." Dreemurr.

This reassured him that he knew the words. He just had to find the courage to say them. He swallowed down his feelings. He had to. She was still looking at him with disgust, even though there was a hint of worry in the way she looked at him. Probably worry for their people. Why on earth for someone like him, after all? "* Don't make me do this, Toriel..." But she wouldn't let him go. He closed his eyes, took as deep a breath as he could - he could feel himself trembling as he did it, and opened his eyes to speak without even facing her. He did what he could to remain calm and cold. "* Who are you...to tell me...what I can and can not do? My Wife? No, you now just a boss monster like the next. I am not obliged to listen to you."

It didn't convince her, but it made it clear to her that his mind was made up. He was going to help this human and he was going to do whatever it was he was going to have to do. "* Everyone else, follow me! Toriel is free to abandon me if she likes..." It was uplifting to see that everyone else came, even Frisk and Alphys were following. He tried to tell the child to stay back, but he refused and for Alphys, he had an additional request. "* Whether it is cowardice or malice, the humans will refuse to create any records of whatever will happen. I want you to record it all. Film it if possible!"

"* A-a-at once." She fidgeted out her cell phone and typed something on it's screen again. Piece after piece shuffled aside again as it gradually, similarly to yesterday, transformed. But instead of becoming a little computer, it turned into an entire professional-use film camera that she had to mount on her shoulder just to carry.

Further ahead, the woman urged him to get a move on, and so they all did. Spurting along the searing, hot pavement, sometimes running after the panicked woman. By the time they reached one of the corners of the village, William had caught up with Asgore and was trying to talk him out of it as well. "* I also think this is a bad idea. What if they're armed?"

He had no time for these kinds of things. Not until he knew what was going on. He needed confidence in his own abilities and he needed to trust the child. "* Then I will arm myself as well."

"* No...I mean what if they're really armed...really really armed..." But it seemed they were already reaching their destination. It was too late to back down. And if he had refused, it would have been too late in another way.

* * *

Beyond several fields of golden glowing corn lay one where green grass shun in the late morning sun. From it's shape, Asgore assumed that it was also for use as farmland, but was laying bare for the time being. On the other end of the uphill meadow stood a whole troop of them.

Men with broad builds, visibly larger than any of the humans he met. Their skin was dark wherever it lay bare and they had little to no black hair on their heads. They were wearing patched-together pieces of human cloth made to match their frame. Some actually had human clothing that fit them. Every single one in the row they formed had a conspicuously large animal pelt hung over their right side from their hip downwards and on the other side, each had a blade hooked in crudely using leather straps for a sheath. They all had an empty, yet focused look on their faces and tusks potruded both sides of their thick lips reaching to the heights of their noses.

Their crude, motionless faces were fixed on their apparent leader, a creature of slightly even bigger stature than the rest. He was covered in animal pelts and had no hair on his backwards-formed scalp. The wild look in his eyes told stories of the savage life in their homelands. He lacked the pelt hanging from his side that the others had, but in one hand he was holding a machete, which he pointed at a little human boy that he was forcibly holding in place with his other arm. "* So the tale of the kingbreaker is true!" His voice had a penetrating grunt in every word he said, and you could hear his amusement at the child and and his mother's terror.

"* I brought him to you! Now give me my daughter back!" She was stumbling in his direction, but the Orc didn't seem to move an inch of the hand he was gripping the girl's entire body of hair with.

"* Not so fast! He might entertain us later." The Orcs behind him laughed.

Still crying, but in anger the human woman screamed at them. "* Give him back to me already, you filthy mudskin!"

With a sudden motion, he swung his blade in her direction and snapped right back. "* Watch your tongue, Shahib, for you are next when we're done with them!" From the movement of his head, Asgore could tell he was referring to the monsters.

It appeared at least the human's plight wouldn't be resolved without stepping in. "* I have come as you demanded. Now do your part and let her go, or this conversation ends."

With no hesitation, the Orc pressed his blade against the base of the child's neck and pulled it at full force, blood spilling in raw amounts and coaxing a shriek of terror out of the soon-to-be-dead child's mother, which was silenced by the Chief, still with the momentum built when executing the boy, speeding to her in two steps and burying his machete in her chest with a powerful swing. Asgore had to gesture Undyne not to do it, as she already had readied spears to hurl at him. They needed to remain calm, no matter what cruelty the Orcs displayed. They were here as monsters, not humans. "* This conversation ends when I say it ends!", the Orc roared with a voice that told of his anger and a slightly threatened self-esteem. It seemed he wasn't used to people making demands the way Asgore just had.

"* Now then..." The Orc continued, was still using a leg to help separate the no longer screaming woman's body from his weapon. "* I'm surprised to see a story come to life. The white, horned king that fights with a summoned scythe. Who cannot be bested without the aid of the kingbreakers." A scythe...they weren't referring to him. They were talking about his father. Then what he referred to as the 'kingbreakers' were the behemoths that they had sent.

The wind blew through the king's beard. He was being toyed with and he wouldn't wait longer to get to what they wanted. "* You have gone through great troubles to meet me. You surely didn't do so to talk about stories."

"* Straight to the point, are we?" His already powerful voice got quite a bit louder and the grunting was becoming more of a roar. to make more of an appearance in front of them.

"* My name is Chief K'Tenga. I too am a leader of my kind. The camps and settlements follow my command. Where I lead, my people will follow! I stand for the will of my people and they will stand for me. And another wave of my brethren approaches right as we speak. When they arrive, they will need a place to live." Asgore stayed silent, even though the Orc made a distinct break, so as to expect him to respond to that. "* The measly apartments the Shahib give us are pathetic! We need something that is worthy of our race!"

He made a gesture with his open hand, with which he ran across the entirety of the village from his viewpoint. "* I've had this place in my eyes for a fairly long time. I will not let a troop of fairy tale creatures take it away from me." The king's hand twitched as he readied the summon of his trident in case he would need it in that exact moment. "* But I am as generous as I am wise. I will make you an offer. Stand down and let us take this village." He wasn't quite yet sure what the savage meant by 'take'. "* You choose another village to live in. Any village. As for the Shahib that live there, just slay them wherever you find them and take their houses for yourselves!" He was just blurting this out with laughter as if he had an assurance of some sort that he wouldn't have to fear any consequences for uttering his brutal intentions like that.

This thing that always bothered William, that he would not want to talk about, was this part of it? Was this what they were? What he meant that some people would think they were if they knew that Koppenberg was financing them? This was the time for Asgore to cut in. "* Is this what we are to you? A second raiding party - here to help purge the humans and pillage their lands?"

The Orc didn't seem to find this the least bit less funny or in any way wrong or worrying. He even spent a second just laughing at the king's visible confusion before he answered. "* We have powerful friends, you and I! Do it without fear! The other Shahib will neither know nor believe it even happened!" He really was serious about this. This was what William must have meant by being protected. They had complete impunity and this Orc was using it with neither shame nor remorse.

Asgore knew that this couldn't be resolved amicably. Not only did his people really need a village, and preferably one close to the entrance to act as an anchor to then - over years and decades all return slowly but surely, but letting Orcs have the village closest to the Underground's entrance would put the monsters into jeopardy in several ways. For one, if the Orcs turned on them - and they were remorseless brutes, there was no way they wouldn't, this would mean yielding a strategic point to them. Then it meant letting down the humans, proving the most hostile of voices towards them exactly right about their fears. And to add to that, this was more than the Orcs making a demand. This was a gesture of dominance. If he was to back down now, they would make more demands later on, and then more and then more, until they were settling in and attacking the Underground.

There was no doubt in what he had to do. Asgore stretched out his left hand in preparation. "* As much as I would prefer moving up here with no conflict." This was the time for him to join in on tapping into the true force of his voice. To speak louder and louder, as he could match the power of the K'Tenga's voice with ease. "* I cannot let my people..." He summoned his trident and prepared his battle stance. "* ...be reduced to just another Elven pawn!" His voice flared up with rage in the last two words. He needed to project power, and he needed his words to be clearly intelligible for the Doctor's device.

The savage didn't seem to much care about the attention. It seemed more like he was enjoying it. The Orc held his machete back and pushed his chest forwards in an attempt to intimidate. "* Then face me in battle, Baphomet! Only us two! King and Chieftain! To the victor go the spoils!" There was no way to avoid a fight. The king took a step aside, and drew a circle with his foot. He once again - after centuries - commanded the earth between the two and around them, to shift away in a circular pattern, slowly but surely creating an earthen arena around the two of them. With monsters on one side and Orcs on the other watching. "* Interesting! But it will only make your death more entertaining!" It wasn't amusement on his face. It was joy. This creature enjoyed the thought and the act of killing, the same way he enjoyed what he had done to the humans.

But he owed his own new child one last gesture of mercy. He couldn't do what he intended to do, without it. "* You can still back down and leave this village yourselves. We need not fight to the death."

The Orc was unfazed by this. "* Do you think me to be a coward who runs on the draw of a weapon?" Yes. Yes he did. "* I will take you down, and those filthy Shahib will be next!" He charged straight to Asgore, with his machete raised in a strong-looking but surprisingly blundering stance. Asgore could hook into his opponent's blade with ease. With a twist on his trident out of his wrists, he could yank it out fo the creature's hand, causing it to be flung to the side. "* Argh, you will regret this!" He didn't even attempt to attack Asgore barehandedly. He simply turned back to go for his weapon. It dawned on Asgore that these Orcs had as little honour as he remembered them to have.

"* You can still leave.."

"* **SILENCE!** " With his weapon in hand once again, the now furious Orc charged right back to him, only for the exact same thing to happen. "* Die! Baphomet! Die!" Again and again, the same played out. The Orc charged at him, Asgore parried the attack and disarmed him. If Asgore's heart was really in a fight, no enemy could lay a single hand on him. And he knew this.

One more time, he offered the savage a way out alive. "* This is your last..."

"* Never!", the Chief screamed, pounding his chest before running towards him again in one of his numerous attempts at landing a single hit. No more MERCY. Asgore had told this to himself multiple times when he reflected the Orcs' presence on his first night up here. Now he had to follow suit. Not be a coward. No mercy was warranted. To try to spare these creatures was in itself cowardice. He could not be a coward. He had to be strong. A strong king for his people. He had to show resolve of a strength that was worthy of his title. The Monster King's Resolve could not be broken. One more time he threw away his enemy's weapon, but before K'Tenga could take a single step back to it, Asgore reached for his face with his open hand and formed a fireball to hold straight into his enemy's eyes. The Orc screamed in pain and tried to push his hand away. Before there was any chance for that to happen, with one movement of his right leg, Asgore pulled the Orc's left leg out of stance and threw him on the ground.

Before the Chief had an opportunity to get back up, he aimed his trident at it and stomped on it's gest with his left paw. He was helpless. This Orc played himself up to be strong and preyed at human children with no remorse, his broad build, wide mouth and fierce voice made a fierce impression, but when faced with an enemy of similar size, he was pathetic. "* Now! Men! Fire!", the now desperate savage roared.

In shock, Asgore looked up. From the furs on the side of each savage, every one of them pulled forth a human weapon. A two-handed black firearm. What followed was an endless, ear-shattering barrage aimed straight at the king. But not a single bullet of over a dozen fully automatic weapons firing at him, actually reached him. They all seemed to bounce and ricochet off an invisible sphere immediately around him. They had human firearms. Each and every one of them. And got involved in this fight at the command of the one fighting. The Orcs were indeed as cowardly, honourless and lawless as he recalled. The Temmies must have known about this. He wasn't sure how strongly bullets would hold up to monsters' magic, but his closest guess was that what was shielding him was this TEM BLOCK.

The boss monster could himself feel his rage seethe through every fibre of his body. He tried to tell himself otherwise. He tried to tell himself that Toriel was right and that people could improve. Maybe she was right about humans. But Orcs could never improve. Not in half a century and not in five hundred years either. He raised his trident and with a single swing, impaled the helpless creature on the ground, while at the same time summoning a spike of rock from below, impaling both sides of K'Tenga's body from opposite directions.

As he waited for their Chieftain to finish bleed out, he watched the warriors above run out of ammunition. Once the last one had nothing any more, he didn't give them a single moment to even think about running away. He made another step on the ground and summoned rocks of solid earth, which he launched straight at the heads of each one.

He used the time that they were startled by their concussions to keep casting. With each step and each motion of his hand, he summoned another thin pillar of rock around each and every one of the Orcs. It was good that they thought he was trying to impale them, as it led to them staying within the pillars. But he kept summoning pillars relentlessly, both upwards from the ground and sidewards between pillars and then diagonally to wrap the small cages in even more earth, until every single one of his enemies was encased in a cocoon of rock and hardened earth. Two managed to break out while he was doing that, but once the others were safely trapped, he quickly hindered any of these two warriors' movements as well.

He kept going, and further pressed together and grew each one's prison until none of them could move an inch. Only then did he gather the fire in his hands. He prepared another attack with all of his might, until he felt the fire course through his entire being. In one leap, he drove both his hands to the ground and channeled his power through them. From every single earthen cage shot a huge, relentless pillar of fire that encompassed it's respective Orc completely and with such a force it extended far into the sky. Nobody was moving, except for the Orcs moving their heads as they screamed in pain, but none would stop burning until every one's screams ceased and every last one was sure to be no more than a lifeless, charred husk.

Even after it was time, and the fire gradually died down, there was a solid minute of silence, until Asgore finally pushed himself back up. With one more swing of his weapon, he pressed the wall in front of him into a slope to allow him to ascend from the arena. The creatures he had fought were now blacker than their skin could ever turn if they were alive. There was no way that even a spark of life was left in a single one of them. With a pierce of his trident, the earth around one of them opened. Without a word, he picked up the corpse and headed back to his friends.

Toriel...she had come after all. He dared not look at her face. He didn't want to know what she thought of this. He couldn't allow it to matter to him any way. No matter how grim this decision seemed, it was the correct one. He just moved past her and held the body in front of William while still making sure to be in the camera's field of vision. "* Look at it." He presented the carcass more clearly for the camera. With a step, he summoned a spike from the ground, and swung the body to impale it upon the spike.

Maybe it was shock, maybe awe, maybe fear, or maybe what it was differed from person to person. But they all stood there in silence and without any of them moving. Asgore just remained calm and kept walking up and down. Freeing and picking up one corpse at a time only to impale them all in a straight line along the width of what was left of this field. He never fully understood why his father was so cruel to anyone who would infringe on his realm. But now, he had finally learned this valuable lesson, and it took the worst of brutes this world had to offer for him to really grasp it. There really was only one language that you could talk to Orcs in. The only language they couldn't pretend not to understand. You needed to write your messages to them with the blood of their own kind.


	12. A Common Day Off

A Doctor's Duty

Chapter 01

A common day off

* * *

It took until he was getting done with the last few, for anything more to happen. Alphys seemed to be done filming and put the cap on with a shaky hand. "* U-uhm...what was that?"

He stopped and looked to the spikes. "* This? A message. A message to all those who seek to hurt the people of this village. A message that this place now has a protector."

She seemed to go on with a very quiet voice. "* the new sheriff in town..."

Well that didn't make any sense."* I beg your pardon?"

Asking her what she said only made her cower back together. "* N-nothing..."

"* Did you capture the things that happened." She was rummaging in her pockets, pulling out small electronic devices one by one and connected them to the camera. "* Yeah. Making copies right now. But what for?"

"* Because we now have leverage. No matter how ridiculous the surface becomes, proof of Orcs making their move on entire villages is bound to be inconvenient to a lot of people." He was getting done with the last one at this point. "* If the Orcs are protected, then I have just committed a sacrilege."

William stepped forward to cut in on this. "* Not necessarily. The Orcs aren't really protected, not if they become a threat to you. Remember, you are part of the variety. Besides, entire villages? Even for them that's much. I doubt he had green light for this."

"* Then it is more than time to find out." He banished his spear once more and made for the path back to the village. Everyone followed, but he could feel the uneasiness in all of them.

"* Uh could you run by me again what we're doing?" It was good to see Alphys regain her courage so quickly, and surprising that she seemed to be either the first to do so, or the only one curious enough to ask.

"* If the humans have already applied electronic networks to banking, then there is another way in which an acquaintance of ours could send us a nonverbal message. It is time to head to the bank."

They were mostly silent as they moved on. Until Undyne mustered the nerve to speak up as well. "* So uh...What exactly was that back there?"

"* I told you before. A message."

Undyne was audibly aggravated. "* Aren't the humans gonna drive us back now?"

He had to stop and take a definitive step in her direction to make his point. "* The same humans that would see their kin slaughtered and an entire village of their own burned down, just to not have to arrest a few non-humans? Those humans?" She had to realise that he had a point. And judging from her silence, she probably did. Besides, among the many things William had explained to him, one clear component was that monsters, like Orcs, were effectively above the law. He just had to avoid going too overboard with it, and even so, it all felt bizarre. Walking through the streets, the grey of which was outshun by the yellow sunlight. With their king's feet still bloody from what had just happened. It was broad daylight, not even noon but she expected the place to be like it was on the first day they arrived all over again. No-one outside, the curtains closed, but that wasn't the case.

The people from the village, most of which were either not there or inside, came outside. They were nervous, and very hesitant to do so, but they applauded them anyway. It seemed somehow some of them must have seen what was happening. After their king whispered something to Sans, he went over to one of the houses. He was telling them about the woman and the child. The human that was with them seemed to be explaining some complicated system using multiple bank accounts to secure the money, but she was only half-way listening and didn't quite get which money and where it was from. There were only two banks in the village anyway, and they were right next to each other. As Asgore and the human representative did whatever they did, all of them, all eight stuck together for the whole thing. Apparently, the bank clerk needed to further convince herself of the scale that this mysterious money came in. And where they got the briefcase with the documents and Asriel's picture from, Alphys somehow failed to pick up on. They just seemed to have it when they needed it.

By the time they were getting finished, and it appeared that it was all wrapped up, everyone was overjoyed. They had surface currency. And hopefully enough to really get a sufficient amount of area. One more day, then they'd know who to look to for the area they were all thinking of. Now to thinking how to spend that day. Surfing right now was impossible, with her phone still in it's film camera spend a day relaxing with Undyne and looking for human anime databases. With how big the internet was, there had to be lots and lots of it.

But that wasn't right. She couldn't let all the others do the work. There were still all the laws. What would they do about those? Then again, what was the point in getting permits if you didn't know what for yet? It was better to buy the land first and then worry about what they can do where."* Alphys..."

She was torn out of her thoughts and looked up at the content smile of her king."* Yeah?"

"* Was your research successful? Do we know who to look to for our purchases?"

Oh god, she hoped his shift in how he behaved with those Orcs didn't affect how he was to her. "* About that. I - uh - W-we can't find out until tomorrow. I g-got an appointment to find out but - I'm sorry -I..."

The king's open hand loomed over her, but her fear quickly wore off when she realized he just wanted her to calm down. "* That is all I wanted to hear. William already explained a lot of this to me. There won't be much of a point to further prepare until you have the names we need." He looked back up from the cowering lizard. "* Say, what would you all say if we spent the rest of this day relaxing and taking a trip wherever you would like?"

Undyne was a bit sceptical about this. "* Wait, wait, wait - what happens if more of those guys show up?"

This didn't appear to worry their king. "* We will stay here in case they do. With what happened to the last of them that came here, how confident do you think them to be with trying the same again? And anyway..." He ruffled Frisk's hair. "* I think we don't have to worry about anything bad happening right now." That was rather ominous. He turned back to this apparent new friend of his. "* If we were to spend a day in the city, how much money would be in order?"

The human looked back at him in surprise. "* Well, that's a bit sudden, but I think a hundred? Then you can still take a cab if you get lost."

What followed was that they gave a hundred of this human currency to each pair that would predictably stay together. Alphys was surprised to see that even the coins were not of gold. This was different in the underground, but up here, money really only had the value that circumstances gave them.

The human interrupted him with a raised finger. "* If you're going to spend a day killing time after...well...this - it would probably best to do that somewhere more open and obvious. At places with many witnesses - you know, downtown and without walking through narrow roads."

"* Then it is settled. You are all to choose whether you stay with us or head for the city. But if you do head for the city, keep good track of the station names and to remember the way back."

While Toriel did move along with Frisk, and the skeletons followed them, Alphys tipped at the already leaving Undyne's shoulder. "* Stop!"

"* What's holding you! Let's go!"

She knew that Undyne was probably bursting to discover the surrounding area, but she also really wanted to go back home after all this excitement and sit back, that would give her more opportunities to prepare for tomorrow. She was wondering what was wrong with her. Everyone was so excited to travel around and see everything that no-one objected to Asgore's very bold decision to just send them off to have fun right after having killed several people so wasn't she supposed to feel like traveling and discovering everything as well? But somehow she didn't. She was curious, yes, but charging headfirst into the unknown so much at a time? It felt like a bit much at once to her. But it appeared that to everyone else, it didn't. "* I...uh - I'm sor - if I said i just wanted to go home, hole myself up at the lab, maybe check out what anime we can watch now...would you come with me?"

"* I.."

She looked upset for a moment. But she hesitated, and after a second, her face softened up and she looked away. "* I wouldn't mind." From there, they stuck together. Asgore and William were so nice to accompany them back to the hotel, where the really big car they used stood empty, the foreign agent seemed to have left the place. From there, they were taken back, where they could walk up the path and retreat into the safety of the Underground.

* * *

Two stark streaks of sunlight shun through the canopy of leaves that covered the sacred grove. Relieved that this struggle might by over, Ichizaki Karada held his beloved friend's hand to help him up. "* Is it over?"

They looked around. The slight mist that the cascade from up the wall cast covered most of the sky above that wasn't already covered in leaves. From the pool of water below, a steady river flowed all the way down through an open path between the high and numerous trees that surrounded the place. He held Mako's hand tightly. "* I think it is. We can finally go home." He smiled at the blue-haired boy. "* Together."

A slight tremble went through Mako's face as he seemed to try words for something. "* Karada-kun, I..."

"* Karada!" A deep, torn voice droned from below the water. "* Karada!" As it gained coherence, he could tell it was not over after all. It was the voice of Mistress Iibiru. A dark shadow covered the waters under the waterfall, until wide ripples of water made way for an enormous, crawling mass of black sludge that rose out of it. "* The Lotus Stone..." With enough of her out of the water, she could start shifting and taking on a rough form, but for the most part was still a black mass, albeit with a human face forming at it's front. "* ...give it to me."

He let go of Mako to brace himself. "* I'm sorry, Mako-chan. But we can't return as long as this is not over." He shouted back at the monstrosity. "* Give up, Iibiru-sensei! Why are you still trying?"

This didn't seem to rob her of her self-confidence, in fact she just stood in place and kept growing. "* I...can never...be stopped."

So there was no other way. Karada closed his eyes and took a deep breath before he looked back at the expanding form of black mass. "* I am not so sure about that." In a swift turn, he presented to her the back of his right hand. From the gem embedded in it shun a light so bright, his sensei had to step back and cover her face with one of her appendages. "* White Lotus! Be drawn from your quiver!"

His surroundings were filled with four different colours, until it soon settled on bright turquoise around his hand. Back in his battle stance, he crossed his arms and stretched them out, before gradually pulling them back. The closer his hands came to one another, the brighter the light glowed, until by the time his left palm touched the back of his right hand, it gained in intensity and formed a large arc of turquoise light with a solid string hanging from the other side for him to pull back with his right hand.

His captivated sensei could only watch as a blue arrow appeared where it was needed. Karada further braced himself, pulled the arrow far back and aimed it at her, until he came to a halt at just the right point. He screamed: "* Your struggles! Your crimes! From these and from this world - I release you!", before letting the sacred arrow fly straight ahead and pierce the blob ahead of him. Now with a look of desperation on her hard to make out, low-framerate face she stumbled in place with the arrow still sticking in place right below her face, before her mass seemed to solidify and the light of the arrow shun out from within, until she was completely engulfed in light and her body dissolved right before their eyes.

* * *

"* You really dig this, don't you?" Undyne looked down at Alphys with her arm still wound around her shoulder. Alphys was sitting in place, gnawing her claws as the credits rolled. She soon phased back into reality. This was just the pilot, and it had everything she loved in it already. And it wasn't the only one. It was exactly how she dreamed it to be. They were scattered to different websites, but there were endless amounts of anime available in large databases. There was so much she couldn't imagine a way how to watch all of it.

When Undyne left for her daily training, Alphys couldn't move or ask her to stay. Getting a kiss always flooded her with nervousness, and by the time she got herself together, Undyne was already gone. Not that that was the end of the world, she was going to be back in a few hours time. And at least she promised that they'd watch at least the first few episodes of this show in one piece when she was back. So that was something to look forward to.

Question was just what to do in the meantime. She couldn't keep watching any of this without Undyne, not on their comfy day together. She thought about trying to work on getting the equipment for Sans' bike ready, but he had already showed to her that there was no point in that until he got involved. Working on Mettaton's power consumption? Who knew where he was and what he was up to right now.

As for the offices they had to visit, that little research team she had gotten together had long since gotten all of what they had together and sent it to her to compile in a list. Her Kenshi-themed ringtune signaled to her a status update on Undernet. But all that she saw was a selfie of a googley-eyed Papyrus with a roofless red car in the background and Sans standing in the corner giving a thumbs up. Weird.

She just emptily browsed the site. Two more looked interesting from the cover and the summary. 'Chouri no Ojouchan' - About a princess in space that had to resolve conflict using the culinary arts and 'Oi! Shinigami-san!' a comedy show about a girl and her relationship with the angel of death. Who is of course depicted by a beautiful young man. She couldn't wait to see the fanart of it. Especially the...wait.

Now she knew what to do. That website. That forum from yesterday. There was something she remembered from there. She quickly scrolled past it back then, to avoid drawing attention to it. Someone posted images of Asgore and Toriel doing rather vulgar things ...mostly with humans, and someone else told them to take this depravity to...some other place the name of which she didn't remember. Even beyond that, what she could do was visit that place. To find out whether the humans had picked up on what happened today and what they thought of them now.

She preferred to turn off the doors' automation, so that no-one would walk in on her. But she was disappointed to see that the thread had already expired. It was there, that wasn't the problem, but no-one seemed to keep it going. But she could tell that that other one was the current one. Here they were talking. Live in that very moment. They shared small clips of both the battle happening, but from so far away, you couldn't make out what was happening, as well as the poor woman's body being carried away once they were done and the burnt Orcs that hung above the grass.

They were furious and confused. Not completely in agreement with one another on what had happened, but it was worrying, how many of them seemed to think they and the Orcs were on the same side and had killed that woman in some way. Of course there was talk of the elves being behind it, much like it allegedly was with everything as she would gradually learn about this place. But what she was concerned most about, was that they'd zero in on the wrong picture. She took it into her own hands and took another picture of herself with the current time, like last time, to show that it was her.

Strangely enough, the images they 'reacted' to her with didn't all look that angry, and they seemed to have dubbed her 'lizard-sensei'. Some even welcomed her back and - understandably - asked her what her version of what happened was. Something she would never wrap her head around was how they, without putting up any pretenses to explain it, constantly went back and forth between being nice and charming and having a good humour and seething with rage within what felt like less than a second.

"* Fraggen Dahls again!"

"* Cultural Improvement in progress."

"* The Elves will pay for this!"

"* It's just an isolated incident, human. They're just an extreme fringe - not all Orcs amirite?"

Of course it was unavoidable that some would simply not believe her story. She could understand that. They couldn't know if they were up here with malicious intentions or not and in the event that they were, who could blame them for suspecting that she would lie to calm them down? But most did seem to believe her, seeing as it made the pieces of the puzzle they were given from what they had collected fit together better than denying her version of it.

Those responses were predictable. But within seconds the place was flooded with images depicting them getting their minds blown and going completely crazy with all sorts of text posts that she didn't understand for lack of context or experience being here. Eventually someone said something that gave her an idea. "* Where were you when we memed the Sheriff of Farfoot into existence?" together with the shopped caps of the king's first interview from the previous thread.

Things took a turn for the worse when she mentioned the money that they went to the bank for. Especially when she dropped the name 'Koppenberg'. Instantly, they were figuratively screaming at her, often in large, thick, red letters to leave. "* Trust us, humans, we're not sent by the Elves - literally funded with Elven money. GET OUT NOW!"

She could still post, she wasn't banned, but to say that they were mad was understating it.

She tried to ask, but it took a while until she wasn't drowned out by the stream of messages telling her to go away. She was content to find out what they were on about and wasn't going to just leave without at least something to go by to find out why one thing meant the other with these people. There seemed to be some context she had missed. Eventually they simply calmed down, and some even responded to her asking over and over. It didn't help that they kept asking if the name 'Salvador Agriculture' had any meaning to her, because telling them that it didn't caused them to accuse her of being dishonest all the more.

At first, they responded with surprise and disbelief over her not knowing what they were talking about, but her persistence seemed to make them open up. The moment they did, they started overrunning her with insanely large infographics, book recommendations, externally saved news articles, and endless amounts of material of which there was just no way that she could just take that all in at once. She just took the easy route and made a folder to save all of these links in. This had to wait.

And all of a sudden, they were surprisingly understanding when she told them that she couldn't just instantly memorize all of what they gave her. Instead, they went on to ask random questions about her and the other monsters. Whenever she asked them back about something they would point her to a different, similar place, one about all the latest human anime, one about those images she would want for studying human behavior, and others about various topics.

As she would notice as time went on on the surface, whenever what these people did make a headline, some of which they posted here and now to show her examples, the way they were described would make you think they were some sort of deadly, armed-to-the-teeth militia that just hates and guns down Orcs, Elves, Naga, Goblins, women and pretty much everyone in masses - every day - out of fun and for no reason, but from what questions they asked, what they revealed about themselves and what they did in their spare time and at work, it seemed much more like they didn't kill or even harm anyone, and were just normal people with normal lives sitting in front of computers posting on the internet much like how she was right now.

This place, that was hated in so many other places, that was said to hate people like her. It was generally confusing and ironic at the same time, that the censorious nature of other websites drove her here of all places, and that here, where everyone was skeptical of anyone that wasn't a human, she would meet the most reasonable people when it came to ignoring any feelings or popularity and staying loyal to what was real and true and what was not.

* * *

The local station was as quiet and empty as the village turned once the humans' reaction to what had taken place outside had subsided. For some reason, Frisk seemed very eager to go to the book store in the inner city. And he kept insisting on it, even after Toriel asked him if he was sure that that was the first place a boy his age wanted to visit. That was pretty curious. Sans intended to try and find out why he was so eager for that later.

For now, he had something else in mind. "* hey, tori! you won't need us, right?"

She stopped to turn around. "* Oh - are you not coming with us?"

"* nah, i think there's a place i wanna go that's not quite where you're going."

"* Okay, I suppose we'll see you then." He headed straight for the little tunnel that led to the other platform.

"WHAT'S GOING ON? WHERE ARE WE GOING?"

He smirked at his brother. "* i think i got something you'll like. actually, you'll find it quite fibulas." They were alone and he knew that Pap actually loved this. He only found it embarrassing when others were listening. Which was why he didn't say a word and just gave Sans a stern look with the upper ends of his eyesockets lowered.

"SANS, ANSWER THE QUESTION. WHERE ARE WE GOING?"

"* why ruin the surprise? i know where we're going and as long as we're on the right track, there's no risk that we go off the rails."

"IF I CAN'T KNOW WHERE WE'RE GOING, I WANT SO SIT AT THE WINDOW."

A concession he was happy to make. When they arrived back upstairs, a train was already arriving on the other side, and they saw Frisk waving at them with Toriel joining in through the window. Once they got their tickets, they soon got into a half-empty carriage. Walking through it to find a seat, they drew the attention of every human they passed. And the ones they didn't pass.

"HERE!" They eventually found a set of seats that wasn't surrounded with occupied ones that bore humans that would stare at them the entire ride. Papyrus rushed to the outside seat and reached up to try to open the window. The problem was just, that the only parts of it that you could move opened outwards from the absolute top to very slighty below the top. Papyrus tried several times, but couldn't even stick his skull through what little opening was possible. He eventually just froze in place, with his skull still rested against the part you could open. "DISAPPOINTING."

It was a calm ride for the most part. There really was quite a lot of rural area to pass before they arrived at the little town he wanted to get Papyrus to. "IS IT THAT?" He pointed at a restaurant further down the road. "ARE WE GOING TO TRY HUMAN PASTA?"

"* nah, better than that."

A few crossings later, Papyrus acted up again, pointing at a toy shop. "IS IT THAT?"

The rest of the way was just a repetition of 'IS IT THAT?' and 'nah', until finally, they arrived. They only needed to go a bit further until they got to a wide, fenced parking lot and a building in the property's corner. "* here we are." They passed through the entrance and into the lot, filled with empty cars of all kinds, which bore tags with extended names of their models as well as prize tags and more specifics on parts and their condition. The sunlight that the many shiny surfaces reflected was blinding him. He figured that he'd need sunglasses or something for this kind of weather. "* aaalmost there..." He had to navigate his brother almost all the way to the building until they finally found what he had in mind. "* see?"

He could see the joy in Papyrus' eyes as he lumbered where he stood in excitement. In fact, he was so surprised, it forced out his googley eyes. "WOWIE! INCREDIBLE! THIS IS EXACTLY HOW I IMAGINED IT!" A curious human - a salesman presumably, came outside to keep an eye on the skeleton that was sliding across the red varnish of a roofless car with two grey seats and two more folded seats behind them and a spoiler on the back, like his bed had.

"* Are you interested in it?" The middle-aged man stepped closer. He didn't seem to be so careful after seeing how Papyrus reacted to a car. "* If you want it, check the tag." He paused. "* You two are those guys from the news, right? That bone thing you do, is it real?"

Sans figured that he'd better pick this one up before Papyrus could have any chance of damaging something here. "* sure, you mean this?" He did what he could to be careful and summon bones only where they wouldn't bump into the narrow-together vehicles that surrounded them.

This raised the man's eyebrows. "* Wow, no kidding. So if you just came here, you got the money? Are you buying?"

"* nah, not yet, that's just why i brought him here."

It seemed Papyrus got a rough idea of where they were going with this. Within an instant he withdrew from the car and pointed straight at the human. "EMPHASIS ON YET! I WANT IT!"

"* woah, slow down there. if you learn to drive, we sure can get the money and buy it. then you can drive it as much as you like."

"* If you can't drive now, that's going to take quite a while." Sans wasn't quite sure how long learning to drive would take, but he took the man by his word for the time being.

"BUT SANS! IF WE WAIT TOO LONG, WHAT IF SOMEONE ELSE GETS IT FIRST!"

"* You know what? I offer you guys a deal. You bring those other 'monsters' with you and draw some real attention to this place, then I put this girl on reserve until you got the money. Deal?"

He didn't appear to expect the googley-eyed Papy to grab him by the collar and shake him, seeing as that threw him off balance completely. "YOU WOULD DO THIS FOR US? THANK YOU! THANK YOU SO MUCH!"

"* All right! All right - stop!" It took his brother a few seconds to stop and hold the poor guy in place so he could sand firm again. "* Just - bring 'em here and we got ourselves a deal."

Papyrus let him go for good. "DID YOU HEAR THIS, SANS?" It was good to see him calm down a bit.

"* yeah, say - uh Mister.."

"* Carson. Like it says right there." The human tilted to the side and pointed at the neon letters looking up from the roof.

* * *

When Sans and Papyrus came back, their king and the human were still sitting at the tables of a café across the street from the banks they had all split up at. Asgore had taken off his armor and put three of the already for human size narrow chairs together to sit on and was leaning on the table, listening to William go off droning on about some complicated legislature process within the nation.

"* hey guys. you saw the status update?"

As always, Asgore had the applications installed, but was yet surprised, seeing as he probably ignored it when it came. "WE ALL NEED TO MEET UP AT THAT PLACE ASAP!"

He pulled his brother back by the shoulder and stepped closer to the two. Asgore seemed relieved that they were inserting themselves into the endless coversation they must have been having. "* chill, no-one's gonna take it away. i promise."

"YOU CAN'T KNOW THAT, SANS! ANYONE COULD COME BY THERE AND BUY IT ANY TIME."

"* trust me, i've got an inkling that we'll know ahead of time. special promise."

"SWEAR IT ON KETCHUP!"

He sighed. He knew this was going to happen, but this was real, real important to Papy. "* yeah, i swear if we don't know ahead of time that someone'll buy that thing, i won't drink a drop of it again." After all, what were a few minor resets of a day or two if at least time was gradually moving forward step by step now?

"* Oh, now I see." It was only now that Asgore had picked out his phone and seen the image. "* You've always dreamed about this haven't you?" He gave Papyrus a hearty smile.

"WAIT...HOW DID YOU KNOW?"

This caught him by surprise. "* Oh, ah - Sans told me." All Sans had to do was play along and he did. "* That's how I know." To Santa, Papyrus had told this. To Asgore however, he hadn't. He cleared his throat and quickly skipped the topic. "* Nevertheless, we'll need a car either way. I'll see to the price. But I think learning to drive takes...does it take time?" He faced William, who confirmed it. "* It takes a while. You probably wouldn't be able to drive it yet."

They explained the situation with the offer, but that didn't give them any response that Sans couldn't predict ahead of time. The king could tell how important this was to his brother, so they were going to go as soon as they could but no-one knew how exactly the following days were going to go, so there was no knowing whether they would have an opportunity tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. Especially seeing as Alphys and probably Undyne were gonna be busy.

Once they had said their goodbyes, they left for the hotel. He could tell how excited his brother must have been from how patient he was, now that the king had agreed to their little meetup. "* still uh...feeling pretty pumped about that, huh?"

"'PUMPED' DOES NOT BEGIN TO DESCRIBE IT!"

"* figured."

The staff at the counter was still pretty riled up over what had happened this morning, but didn't make any trouble and this time, they actually had someone deal with them other than that one guy they usually made to talk to them. It seemed like after only a day or two, they were already warming up to monsters being there. He now felt a bit safer being here with his brother. Before, they were completely new, and in fear and confusion, who knew what someone would do - especially at night, but now that they had been up here for a while, and their surrounding neighbourhoods having been to the surface, the humans were more used to them being here. Leaving Papy here to watch some tv would give him an opportunity to further scout the area, maybe even check up on what Frisk was up to. They were doing this afternoon for the fourth time, but he hadn't LOADed since they got back to the village, but it was still a thought in the back of his head.

Relieved over being done, he closed and locked the door behind them. "OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD I'M SO ECXITED! I DON'T THINK I CAN HOLD IT IN MUCH LONGER!" Papyrus bounced up and down in place with googly eyes, the moment the door was locked.

Sans could only laugh. He couldn't imagine how the thought must have felt for his brother, the thing he had been dreaming of in all of his life - sometimes in the literal sense - becoming a reality. He knew he couldn't talk him into calming down, so he just picked up the remote control, sat on his bed and turned it on. "* wanna see what programs humans watch?"

"WE'LL SEE. I DON'T THINK THEY CAN KEEP UP WITH WHAT WE HAVE THOUGH." He came over to sit next to Sans. "LET'S HOPE IT IS ACCEPTABLE."

He turned it on, to see two people in suits sitting at a shiny maple desk with a computer animation that probably depicted the planet earth in the background. "* ...the central bank warns of a bubble in..." He could tell that this was a news channel. Nothing Papy could get hooked on. What he next saw was a tv show of sorts. Rather short people with hanging-down ears and pointy noses were gathered around a few humans and another one of these short people. One of the short ones was wearing sports clothes. "* However you're gettin' the dough, Cartel wants it's share..." Human drama - not his thing. "* Prince Sunshine, the wildebeasts are on the march here!" A cartoon. Closer, but unicorns and rainbows were probably not really what he liked. "* Controversial presidential candidate Daniel C. Victor..." More news. "* When we first heard of it, we just had to start planning to go for a human audience."

"STOP! RIGHT! THERE!" Sans was about to change the channels, he didn't really realise it until he was just about to press the button, but what was on the screen was a talk show set, with a half circle of chairs arranged towards the camera on a platform with a colourful background. Among a set of very different-looking people on the chairs, on the left side sat Mettaton in his newly unveiled humanoid form. He was sitting in his chair, head resting on the back of his hand, and his elbow resting on his leg with a smile as an older looking human in the centre with cards in his hands, probably the show host, gestured him to stop talking and asked someone else to go on.

The person addressed was a woman who sat next to an Orc. Her skin tone, slightly taller stature and muscles covering her barely clothed arms and legs and her tusks made it likely that this was another Orc, just a female one. "* But if you do that, you alienate Orcs and contribute to human advantage! What makes you justify this?"

Mettaton, pretending to twirl his metal hair, lazily turned his head back to her. "* The surface is a whole new experience and a whole new audience. We have to play safe and try out one thing at a time. We came up here to entertain humans..." He spread his arms and legs towards the audience and the camera. "* All of you beauties should get a shot at seeing how wonderful I am, it's humans that we want to entertain first and foremost, and it's humans..."

The Orc was trying to interrupt him and eventually turned a little louder. "* But it contributes to systemic margi..."

Apparently, Mettaton was losing his patience. He was good at not visibly showing it, but he raised his voice quite a bit to hook back in. "* Darling, I am talking about humans right now."

"* Darling?" At once, the female Orc's eyes widened and her face tore itself into a mask of blind rage. She snorted through her broader nose. "* DARLING?" She reached under her chair to pick up an axe that she seemed to have had below it and screamed: "* I will have your head for this!" She was getting up from her chair, screaming at Mettaton and trying to charge at him. It took the bigger man next to her to hold her, pull her back, and under immense struggles from both of them, calm her down to get her back into her seat.

Suddenly and without Sans doing anything, it switched back into another news studio. "* Due to technical difficulties, we interrupt the current program."

"DRAT! I WANTED TO SEE THIS."

"* i didn't do anything. should i..."

"NO, THEY MIGHT SWITCH BACK."

"* And now, back to the news. Terror strikes the family of Julio Santiago, CEO of Salvador Agriculture , as after attending an exposition yesterday afternoon, the daughter of the global enterprise's executive failed to come home. Already in heavy worry, the family has come to the conclusion that something happened." It cut away to footage of an enormous estate, the buildings painted in clean white, supplied with sports facilities, a huge park and a decorated garden with someone talking over it. It soon cut to a few people, sitting at a table, and all of them worked up. "* It is a tragedy in the making. The Santiago residence, silent, all the family in shock." The woman, probably the mother, was in tears and her husband was holding her closely. After a few seconds of that, it cut to another shot, where they seemed to have calmed down and sat next to each other.

"* Why is this happening to us? We just want our girl back."

"* Is there any indication what could have happened?", an off-screen reporter asked. They just shook their heads.

It went back to displaying the area. "* The police has not released further information on their investigation yet, but the reaction of the family leaves one thing clear. Certain times don't await the Santiago family."

"NOW THAT'S DEPRESSING." Sans' brother took the remote and switched back to the cartoon. All the better if he got distracted. This left Sans with a chance to check on the kid.

* * *

He wasn't really comfortable being seen as a boy his age, going every step holding hands. But he was afraid that letting go out of his own impulse would give Mom the feeling that he was distancing himself or rejecting her. On the other hand, when they arrived at the centre of the big city, he was glad about it. The entire place was in a rush, there were all kinds of people moving past them, many of them in a hurry, advertising boards, timetables, newspapers at the news stands, there was a lot of stuff at once to see, which made it very hard to focus.

But this wasn't the first time he came here, he was repeating this day again to try and get his hands on something that was important. He knew where to lead her to find the way to the book store, he already knew where the blocky building was and he knew where to look to find what he was looking for. Every time he first asked her, Mom was surprised that of all the places, he was the one most eager to go there and not her. The problem each time, was just to convince her to buy a certain book, and the last few times, he failed, leading her to just tell him that it wasn't appropriate for him or not a good choice for his age.

But it was important to him that he could get to it. It was a reminder of the only good memory he had of his life before. He even knew not only that there was a copy of it here, but he knew where it was. He got his new mother to let go of him, when they reached the novel section in the second floor with a comfortable reading niche for her to sit back while he looked around other places. It was always easy to have her sit down there and give something a first read while he headed over to what he was looking for. Each time he tried, he used to stand there, the book in hand, and think about what to say. How he could trick her judgement. She was the one with the money after all.

But this time was different. He did move past the many shelves to a corner on the other side, he made it to the book and sat down to give it another look, read parts of the heavy old book, and forgot about the time. But what was different, was that someone came up to him and gave him a tip on his right shoulder. "* heya chum, what'cha got there?" He showed it to him, but he reacted to it as calmly as he expected. "* woah, that's uh - you sure this is your thing? explains a lot i guess..." The cover simply read 'Pick up Lines - a compendium'. And that was all that it was. A hard cover with hundreds over hundreds of pages of pick up lines. A treasure trove for anyone who liked to startle people by flirting with them. "* you sure you like this?"

Frisk nodded. "* Yes. I'm pretty sure Mom won't agree to it though."

"* you really serious about this? why would you want it?"

"* Someone I used to know had it. It reminds me of her."

Sans closed his eyes and took a breath. "* okay, whatever makes ya happy. not like that can't be helped. say, how about i buy and hold on to it. and i pass it to ya later?" He gave him a wink. "* it'd be a secret favor, how about it." Did he really mean this? He must have, seeing as he took out some bills to wave around. "* but you gotta promise you won't get caught with it once you have it." Frisk didn't say a word. He just nodded. If Sans really did this for him, he was going to have to find a good way to thank him later.

* * *

It was quite a while after the Skeletons had left, when Asgore finally heard the sirens that William told him were those of police cars, echoing along the streets, heading to where his recent confrontation with the dark-skinned invaders had taken place. After hours, they bothered to show up after all. Toriel came back with the child, they left for the hotel, and still no sign of them. At some point, he interrupted William, who was currently describing the historic relation of his country to several far-eastern ones, to ask him to accompany him. He was going to go back to the scene of the fight to see what was keeping those sleazy law enforcers.

When he arrived, one police officer was moving from body to body to examine them, while the other one was finishing up setting a parameter - pressing thin metal bars into the ground around the battleground and using the loops at their tops to arrange a plastic band around it. A third one who was taking notes faced the two of them and headed to their end of the parameter with an open hand. "* Excuse me, sir, this a police investigation, you've got to stay outside."

"* Yes, I am aware, I am the one who did this." With no hesitation, he moved forward, putting his arms together palms-up. "* You are free to hold me for questioning."

But the man just smiled back. "* Thank you for the offer, but that'll really not be necessary." He turned back to his colleague, who was looking very closely, sometimes moving a piece of the brittle subjects of his interests around to break something off and looking for additional injuries. "* So? What'd you determine?"

The red-haired officer put his gloves aside and picked up a notepad of his own before coming back from the police car. "* All vics except two were Orkish. Each Orc was armed with a loaded assault rifle, used ammunition is spread across the sinking but the rifles themselves are at the earth formations on the other side of the sinking - the one in the sinking has three puncture wounds in a straight line, maybe a pitchfork..."

Asgore just took a step back, stretched out his hand and resummoned his scythe. "* Or this?"

It didn't get the reaction he was expecting. The policeman just nodded. "* ...or a trident. No-one except the one down there has those puncture wounds, but the vics up here seem to have suffered a physical trauma to the head. Causes of death will have to be determined by the coroner." He turned around to the two of them. "* All in all, the first conclusion is that this..." He picked out a pair of sunglasses to put on while going on with a very serious voice. "* ...was an accident."

* * *

"Yeah! I caught another one!"

"we're here, doc, you can put the game away."

"Oh, sorry getting right to it. Now - The Library of Misnomora, the Carrachuni Archive and the Cache of the Restricted Enclave in Xilun. Only three of the many places where humans gathered the knowledge they amassed in raw amounts, only for those places to be burned down by various hostile factions and foreign pillagers. Endless amounts of knowledge lost. Am I right? No, I'm wrong. A lot of it isn't lost. At least not forever. There always was one race of monsters, with long life cycles and an insatiable curiosity, who spent all their lives travelling into human-inhabited areas across the continents they could reach to acquire and create copies of as much human scripture as possible, and they have been doing this for thousands of years. The Brainlizards."

"What?"

"Yes. But you probably already know this, this is mostly for the skeletons. Brainlizards - you know, before the monsters were banished - lived in enormous complexes that they built below the surface. Monsters that willingly lived underground, have evolved to grow accustomed to that and did nothing else in all the time they had available, than collect and acquire human knowledge. In fact, you could say they lived underground before it was..."

"doc, please don't!"

"All right all right - back on track. Their bodies naturally allow for much less conscious use of their magical power, because it dedicates it to keeping a buffer to their life force. They might be weak in active magic attacks, but Brainlizards make up for it with an increased basic health. Now, that you, Alphys, and others like you can return to the surface, we have great wonders to expect. Remember how far the humans have advanced the sciences now. And you lot will help advance and spread them so much faster. It's going to be a splendorous process to watch."


	13. Defying the Odds

A Doctor's Duty

Chapter 02

defying the odds

* * *

It didn't get the reaction he was expecting. The policeman just nodded. "* ...or a trident. No-one except the one down there has those puncture wounds, but the vics up here seem to have suffered a physical trauma to the head. Causes of death will have to be determined by the coroner." He turned around to the two of them. "* All in all, the first conclusion is that this..." He picked out a pair of sunglasses to put on while going on with a very serious voice. "* ...was an accident."

"* What? How?"

William tipped him on the arm. "* I told you they'd stay out of the way."

"* No, I want to know now." Asgore was only curious. "* Then tell me, what do you think happened?"

The officer tipped his sunglasses, took a short look at his notes and emptily looked off to the distance so as to picture what he was describing. "* They were practicing. Standing on the other side above and firing at an empty spot in the sinking, while the one down there was playing with his lighter. Then the shooting got too loud, he dropped his lighter and caught fire. He was in shock. He panicked, didn't know what to do, so he went to his friends. They were scared too, so three of them stabbed him with knives. While they did, they caught fire as well and started running around. He ran back down there, until he suffered an uncontrolled fit and jumped in such a way that he - back first, got pierced through the chest by that structure and the momentum took him all the way to the ground. The others were in just as much pain and fear as he was, running around, dropping their firearms in the first places that suited it, that's why they're in those strange moulds. Then they ran around randomly until each one suffered a similar fit and landed themselves onto one of these spikes."

At this point, Asgore had long known there was no way to 'convince' the official otherwise, but he played along regardless. "* And how come the puncture wounds were in a row? How come the stone spikes were in a row? How come there even are spikes that grew from the ground?"

"* Coincidence. Life is full of coincidences."

William was now pulling at his arm. "* I told you."

He turned around to him, before with bafflement, now with amusement. "* What is going on?"

William buried his face in his palm and took a step back from him. "* Even policemen's careers depend on their reputation. No-one wants their name all across tv and newspapers calling them names, so of course you're going to see them stay away from non-human crimes. The police is being covered non-stop as it is. They're not going to do anything."

They went back, but Asgore couldn't help but ask along the way. "* There was bound to be witnesses to what happened. What these people are doing, how is it supposed to work? Wouldn't the witnesses tell on them to other humans?"

William laughed. "* It's uh...you're lucky, you know? That you ended up here of all the places. This is a pretty isolated village. Anyone could tell from that question, you haven't been to the city yet. It's like a completely different world. The people there - at least the humans - are kind-hearted. Open. Trusting. You'll see people of all sorts of races, including humans and Orcs just walk past each other. So if you ever talk to them there, or talk to people generally in public, here are some points you need to remember." They passed the café and made their way to the cliff. It was time to collect the last two. "* One - Nothing bad is up. Whatever is up in real life, in Public-Politics-Land, nobody knows of anything bad happening until it's too late to do something about it. There are powerful people around, and if there is a bad thing they wouldn't want to happen, they could easily stop it any time. So trying to stop whatever it is would just get people to call you names as well. Two - What happened earlier today didn't happen. I mean it. If you try to tell anyone in the city, they will be upset, but they won't believe it. Even if you showed them that these earth formations naturally occurring is impossible, or the blood on your foot or the shape of your weapon and the Chief's wounds, even the footage your chemist friend recorded..."

He couldn't suppress a narrow-eyed chuckle. "* She's not a chemist." And he knew that.

"* They would refuse to believe it. Don't even try. It probably won't make sense to you now, and it will still not if and when you see for yourself. Orcs are perfectly nice and peaceful people, who are innocent and fleeing from a war by no creation of their own, and who have no bad intentions whatsoever. And the same goes especially for Elves. Thinking badly about Orcs just gets you ostracized, but even non-humans can get legal trouble if you say the wrong thing about Elves. These things you were about to say on the plane, that has to just stop. At least when anyone's listening."

This time together, they went up the path back to the Throne Room and into the Underground. Asgore kept looking over to see how William would react to these unfamiliar surroundings. The contrasted dark and bright rooms startled him and realizing that the Throne room was just one big garden of golden flowers caused him to stumble for quite a bit, desperately trying not to stomp on the flowers, and for lack of possibility to do so, of course failing over once. Several times, he stopped just to take in the city they passed, to look down from the bridges and try to grasp the expanses of the of New Home. "* You said you're the king of the monsters. Is this your kingdom?"

"* This is one city in the kingdom. The capital. It's not the biggest city, but it has been a tradition for my family to be modest in how we live."

William turned to him. "* A modest king who takes a stand for who he governs even if it's uncomfortable." He was trembling for a second. "* If you wouldn't stand here and we hadn't walked through your tiny palace, I wouldn't even believe someone like that existed..." For a second, he had this desperate look on his face, the same one from last night when they stood in the rain, and in the plane before that. By now, Asgore had a much better understanding of what he was probably thinking, when he looked like that. After taking a breather, they set forth to continue.

William stayed silent while they traveled through the CORE. Much like how it was with Asgore when he first came to the surface, now William felt more and more like he was dreaming. Like all this was much too wonderful and fantastical to be true. That magical creatures, some of them literal fairy tale creatures from how Asgore described them, had come to the surface. From this Underground. A magical kingdom with an all-monster population, who were governed by someone who cared about his people, where having to adapt what you say to what is acceptable was a foreign concept, just like how violent incurring groups were foreign to them. A complete utopia that he couldn't remotely believe was real, yet here it was.

He broke the silence when they crossed a bridge, from which he could look around to see this unworldly advanced and enormous construct they were travelling through, to ask whether - if 'modern human arms' were something so alien to them - they really themselves built this. He had picked up that they got a lot of what they had came from human rubbish dumps, but strangely enough, the king confirmed that scientists built it almost one-and-a-half centuries ago. Either the human sciences were a lot more advanced than William thought, or the monsters' somehow advanced much faster, but only in certain fields. Harnessing the power of the earth's core, and this from so far above it, a miraculous Perpetuum Mobile that probably created a never-ending supply of power, so long as it remained intact. After all, what it really got it's power from was the earth's gravity field keeping metals at it's core in constant movement.

In the shiny hall of a five star hotel, Alphys and Undyne waited for them next to a fountain on the other side. Thankful that they were met half-way, they went back to the surface to join the others. It was getting dark and it was time for supper. The staff at the reception liked hearing that Asgore had currency to pay, but they still refused to take their money until their stay would be over. After that, they gathered back in the dining hall. By the time they were here, it was already getting dark outside and the staff was closing the curtains to keep the light inside the now more lively room. Supper on the surface, another first. With everyone sitting at the same table again, except that they were one more guest, it was getting more and more crammed. They all had had breakfast, so all seven of them including Frisk ordered one cutlet with vegetables to share and eat bits of. William stuck to a salad. For him and Asgore, disregarding the early encounter, it was a rather uneventful day. With their meals on the table they all shuffled to sit together one more time to ask the waiter to take a picture of them.

The reflection of the lamps hanging on the ceiling on the beige tiles on the ground, the scaffoldings on windowless walls and the curtains over windowed walls between them generally gave the place a much more comfortable atmosphere than you would think it would have with all the tables full of curious humans struggling to sneak a glance or a short stare without drawing inappropriate attention. It seemed that despite everything, their arrival had attracted customers rather than scaring them off.

* * *

Despite how relaxing Asgore, Toriel and the others seemed to find this new environment, Alphys found getting in the train and sitting down very uncomfortable. She was lucky that Undyne was still tired. They had gotten up and headed straight for the station to catch the first train to Troughton to spend the day in walking range of the office. Undyne and Asgore had taken turns standing guard again last night, and she could see the effects on her Captain's face. She could have let her sleep longer, but she already missed breakfast and Alphys wanted to be absolutely sure that they'd be in walking range when the time of their appointment came up. It was essential that she wouldn't put off something as important as this. She wouldn't even have Undyne telling her that she was neurotic. You could never be neurotic enough when every delay meant the people at home getting more impatient.

The town this office was placed in was definitely bigger than the village, but she had already seen the city on maps on her cell phone and the computer at home and there was just no comparison. Getting to the place they were looking for was less of a bother than she thought. It was inside the town hall, and the town hall was at the side of a large square with food stores. And more branch banks. But most of it were places to eat. Seeing as Undyne had nothing and was only half-way really present, this was good. The first place they past, she'd rather they didn't go to. She saw someone eat spaghetti, and she assumed that this wasn't what Undyne wanted to try as one of her first meals up here. The next place had several spits with kebab spinning around, but she figured that wouldn't be the best place judging from the guests' and staff's tusks. Third time was the charm. A Xilun Wok with spicy noodle dishes. Granted, that was quite close to pasta, but it was something new regardless. And it was staffed and visited by humans as well.

Throughout the entirety of it, Undyne was half asleep. Whenever she wasn't and was trying to lead the way, she was still suggestible as to where to go. She found that when they sat down with an extra small plate of noodles, she didn't feel nearly as looked at as she did in other places, but maybe that was because of how the only other guest here looked a bit more like Frisk than most humans they got to see up here. After trying a few more times, she came to the conclusion that there was no point in talking in detail to Undyne about the many offices they were going to have to visit in the coming days and what for. She stopped listening to everything mid-sentence. They settled down with Undyne sleeping in place next to Alphys, right here. It was probably better, seeing as the people with cameras and microphones that kept showing up at the hotel every morning would probably catch up with where they were and swarm them before long here as well. And as long as they were at this square, there was nothing to worry about. She could let Undyne catch some sleep.

She couldn't move with her sleeping Captain's arm wrapped around her, but she could check up some things on her cell phone. Maybe check the news for what was going on elsewhere or what some were thinking about what had happened, but when she read the headline 'Humanitarian Champion and Protect Orc Bodies organizer Mawab K'Tenga died in shocking accident' she quickly scrapped that idea again. Probably not the best idea to get her info from those kinds of sources. She thought about actually watching anime from her cell phone, and the problem wasn't even that the screen was a bit small that way, but putting on headphones like this was impossible, so she stuck to just looking for names to look up later and browse anime-related boards. To her relief, there was only one pair of reporters that showed up, and waving them to go away with the one hand that was free to move was enough to get rid of them.

After a few hours, she decided that it was time. She couldn't get out of her grip, but she could try shaking Undyne until she woke up. "* Feel better?"

Undyne had to yawn and stretch herself to shake off the drowsiness and sit upright again. "* Yeah a bit. Is it time yet?"

"* Not really but I don't know if they prepone appointments, I just want to be safe." They eventually got up to leave. Alphys couldn't help but thank the staff for being patient with them like that, but all she got for a reaction was the man behind the counter berating Undyne on sleeping at night, and switching back to friendly goodbyes from one second to the next. While Undyne was sleeping, Alphys thought she saw something for a moment, it was hard to tell seeing as they were sitting in a niche opposite from the window and on the other side of the square, but now that they were in hearing range, it seemed like she wasn't imagining things after all. When they opened the door to the land registry's waiting room, they heard it at it's full volume.

"* OH MY, IF IT ISN'T THE MAGNIFICENT DOCTOR ALPHYS!" Mettaton's blocky frame, an only lightly clothed human woman in each arm, slowly rolled in their direction from between the rows of chairs lined up around one half of the room. Burgerpants, wearing an orange cat costume over his already feline form, was shouldering a camera and following Mettaton's every move, moving himself so that he always faced Mettaton's front side to some degree. Mettaton let go of the women and started rolling in a circle, using his display, hands and adjustable stand to keep looking lively for the camera. "* I HAD A MARVELOUS LIVE PERFORMANCE IN A HUMAN STUDIO JUST YESTERDAY! AND WHEN IT WAS ALL DONE, THESE TWO BEAUTIES WERE SO AMUSED THEY NEVER LEFT MY SIDE. JILL, PATRICIA, MEET THE EXTRAORDINARY ENGINEER WHO MADE ALL THIS POSSIBLE. EVERY WIRE, EVERY PANEL OF MY BODY, SHE KNOWS THEM ALL OFF BY HEART, BECAUSE SHE IS THE ONE WHO BUILT IT!" He rolled next to Alphys and held her outter hand up.

Alphys wanted to ask, but she was too dumbstruck to open her mouth. Good that her Captain did it for her. "* Mettaton what are you doing here?"

Letting go of Alphys, he sped around to rest one hand on Undyne's shoulder instead. "* HOW NICE OF YOU TO ASK, MY DARLING. OF COURSE I'M NOT HERE WITHOUT REASON! I'VE ALREADY HAD MY STAFF SCOUT THE CITY AND GUESS WHAT THEY FOUND! COMPARABLY FAR OUT, BUT CENTRAL ENOUGH FOR BASIC SHOPS, FAR AWAY FROM HIGH PRICE MILES OF CLOTH SHOPS OR EXPENSIVE HISTORICAL BUILDINGS! PERFECT FOR SOMEONE WITH LIMITED MONEY BUT AS CAPTIVATING AS ME! A PIECE OF PROPERTY! An EMPTY HALL PERFECT FOR A STAGE AND SEATS FOR AN AUDIENCE! WE CAN SET UP A SHOW, STREAM IT OUT FOR EVERYONE TO SEE - EXPAND AND THEN ONLY THE SKY IS THE LIMIT..." He headed back to Alphys and lowered his voice, holding his hand in front of the opposite side as if he was whispering. "* ...but it takes two to trade, doesn't it?"

The loudspeaker turned on. "* Mr. Mettaton the robot the only one real Mettaton.", a bored voice announced as if it was all one name.

Mettaton moved his upper body up and down to exaggerate his surprise. "* OH GOODNESS, WOULD YOU LOOK AT THE TIME!" He turned to wave at the camera. "* WE'LL BE RIGHT BACK AFTER A SHORT AD BREAK! TOODLES!" While still rolling to the door, he turned around to raise a finger at Burgerpants, who was putting down the camera. "* AH AH AH, NOT SO FAST, HONEY. WE'LL BE ROLLING AGAIN RIGHT WHEN I'M BACK." He moaned as he understood that this meant that he had to hold the camera during the entire time, just to be ready for when his boss was back. After a few bangs, of him crashing against the door frame, Mettaton called Alphys for help to change his form. He fit through the double doors here and the wide doors of the trains, but the way into the office was a bit too narrow. But once this was all done, the show smoke faded out and the door closed behind him, it was silent again. The silence lasted so long, it would have fitted if there was a wind blowing a leaf through the room, but the doors were closed.

"* Do you believe this guy?" Burgerpants didn't put it down again, but he was making some adjustments to the camera. "* As if the Glamburger gig wasn't bad enough."

Undyne went over to elbow him and laughed, pointy teeth straight to his face. "* Hey. You always wanted to enter the show biz. I guess you got the promotion you always wanted!" Upon seeing his disapproving look, she laughed all the more. "* I'm so bad!"

He scratched the side of his costume. "* Nah, you're right. Gotta start small I guess."

It didn't take that long until Mettaton came bursting out of the door again. "* I have what we need." After a shorter, much less spectacular transformation back to the rectangle everyone was used to, he gestured Burgerpants to get going. "* AAND WE'RE BACK. I HAVE NAME AND ADDRESS AND AM NOW ON THE WAY TO OUR NEXT STOP..." He rolled backwards out of the room.

Similarly to before, one person after the other was called in, until. "* Just Alphys." That was their cue. A clumsy goblin stumbled past them and almost bumped into Undyne. What a way to see one of those up close for the first time. She had only seen them on images, a lot of which were cartoons made by humans who seemed very upset with them. They got into the narrow room. Shelves full of files lined both walls to the left and right and behind the desk that a woman in her presumable 50s sat and absently typed something on a computer with a shiny flat screen. "* You are Just Alphys ri...no kidding I would recognize you."

She blushed at the reaction. Getting looked at was one thing, but someone recognizing how much you stand out was something different. Undyne lost her patience and pushed herself past her to lean on the desk. "* So, you got the info?"

The greyed-out woman pointed at her to ask Alphys if she was here with her. Once that was confirmed, she crammed in one of the folders behind them and drew out two sheets of paper. "* This will be what you're looking for and a copy..." The front one had a stamp in the corner and a table at the centre with various information, seeing it from where she stood, probably several kinds of contact data. But if that was what it was, there was no way this was all. She asked if there was more, seeing as those were only two sheets. "* No this is all certainly accurate. I double-check every order I work through. The farmland around Farfoot village only has one owner. It is all right there." She slid it close enough for Alphys to read. It was sets of contact data, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, addresses for two offices, but what sprung into her view first and foremost was the name, because the name was what rung a bell. This must have had to do with why she was asked about this before. The name was Salvador Agriculture.

She only noticed that she was blankly staring at the sheet of paper when Undyne broke her trance. "* What? Is something wrong?"

"* Uh...N-no...it's all okay." She gave Undyne an awkward smile. It wasn't like she was ready to tell her just yet where she had gone back to hear that name for the first time. On the other hand...she was doing it again. Lying and keeping secrets. After thanking the official and leaving the place, she went back on keeping that secret. "* A-Actually, yeah something is wrong." She told her about her last encounter with the humans online and their mention of that name as if she was supposed to know it.

In conjunction with that being the name they were looking for the whole time, both figured it would put together an ominous picture. But Undyne took all of it much more relaxed than Alphys was afraid she would. In fact she laughed at it. "* Can't keep guessing. Let's go back to what we were doing. What next?"

Alphys looked back at the paper. "* We got something to go by now. Maybe I could ask our 'research team' for help?" And while waiting for the train, and in the train, they spent the rest of the time passing all the data they were given, all the phone numbers, e-mail addresses and both postal addresses on to everyone through the Undernet, asking whoever saw them to start using them to make contact. From looking them up online, they could quickly tell that this Salvador company was a big deal. They operated across the world and were known for buying up smaller businesses and a lot of pesticide- and GMO-related scandals. The first caller would probably not get much attention from them, especially not someone with authority to do so to come and just sell a load of property. They had to boost any signal they sent them. So all monsters that were at home got to their computers and used them and their telephones to try and just repeat the message so often it would get across eventually. That they were to contact Asgore, and they gave the other monsters the address of that hotel they stayed at to pass on as well.

The plan was simple. If it was as big a thing as it seemed, any calls would probably only reach some sort of call-in center to appease customers, no-one important. But if several of their means of contact were brigaded, sooner or later, some-one higher-up would get notified, and then someone higher-up than that and so on. There was no time to wait after all. Everyone back home, especially the volunteers, was eager to get going with what they wanted to do as soon as possible, so nobody thought for a second that contacting them once and just waiting for an answer to come at some point way down the line was an option.

When they called Asgore, it turned out he was at the MTT resort, showing William what monster food was like. Just outside of the hotel's parking lot sat Toriel with a book on a chair from inside, watching Frisk and some other human children that she recalled from when they first returned to the underground play catch. He was laughing and he looked happy in a way she hadn't seen him before. Papyrus responded to her status updates, but only with one of his own featuring a picture of him and Sans in front of a door with a neon image of a car. Behind them, it took some speculation to make out, but it looked like it said 'driving lessons'. With all this, contrary to what she thought, they came back only to find themselves on their own right away again.

Before they'd look how to spend the rest of the day, she needed to go back. But this time with Undyne watching. She placed her cellphone on the table, had it transform into a screen with a keyboard and went through the routine of identifying herself with an image. The people in 'Monsters General - Sheriff's first Showdown edition' didn't react much to her. Some would respond to her questions by linking news articles about some abduction, but most were busy - way too busy posting and re-posting images of a man with with a golden hammer and golden hair, clad in heavy golden armour, leading an army of other men in heavy armour into battle against hordes of oversized, blue Orcs and repeating a chant, often in big and bold letters. "* Brace yourselves, Victor is coming." She just gave Undyne a reciprocated look of confusion before going on to ask them what that meant.

* * *

"Something that a lot of people - especially everyday humans - don't understand and hence slip back into disbelief of the obvious, is that Elves barely ever take matters into their own hands. Wherever there is an opportunity, they only. Ever. Act. Through. Proxies. That way, tracing any subject matter back to them remains possible, but convincing others of their intent behind the ultimate result of any series of events becomes very difficult because whenever it doesn't serve Elven interests, humans suddenly lose their high regard for other races and become extremely arrogant, thinking others aren't capable of planning far ahead.

How this applies here is for instance, say there is a country who's continued existence is a thorn in their eye, maybe it's because it's near their homelands. Of course they wouldn't send an army of their own to attack them. That would risk casualties and make them look bad in front of the rest of the world. What they would obviously do is to found, rile up, supply and equip a militia from within the target's own population to wreak havoc as much as possible. Maybe even use whatever mass outreach they have to portray them as freedom fighters or rebels fighting against an oppressive regime to appease outsiders while the target's population slowly kills itself. That way the target gets destroyed and their own hands remain clean.

The general rule is that whenever things in business or politics seem way too easy, things happen to play out much, much too conveniently, it becomes less and less likely that it's just a very convenient coincidence - convenient coincidences don't really exist anyway - but it's more and more likely that actually someone is actively making sure that you reach your goal unhindered. Any path anyone takes is rocky. If you find that there don't seem to be any rocks on yours, that simply means that someone went through the trouble of removing them."


	14. The trader's apprentice

A Doctor's Duty

Chapter 03

The trader's apprentice

* * *

"Human behavior can't be explained with genetically predisposed, in-born nature. At least not alone. To vast degrees it can, but the stronger the cognitive dissonance or unnatural behavior gets, the sooner their nature surfaces and forces natural decisions onto them. But it isn't just nature. It is also not only nurture. If a female raises her offspring the way she will end up raising it naturally, all you have with combining nature and nurture is another extended result of in-born nature. Anything that deviates their behaviour from it's natural course has a negative impact and in times like these often comes with malicious intent and with the knowledge that it is bad. The reason human behaviour in our time deviates far from human nature is a result of almost a century of deliberate social engineering, oftentimes enacted through the education system, by hammering falsehoods into the minds of impressionable children, continuing this process of shaping young minds to come to false conclusions based on false assumptions and false information throughout their early lives, by marketing it as 'education'.

When you walk around on the surface, you won't see them advertise misinformation as misinformation, they call it education. It's not that all education is bad, you can rarely do much wrong in the sciences, since the moment you make any scientific thesis based on falsehoods, reality swoops in sooner or later to bring you back to earth. But people who work in the sciences also don't aggressively overemphasize the prestige of the education their faculties provide. Whenever you see someone constantly highlight how they are 'high' and how their 'education' implicitly makes you a higher being if you accept and subscribe to it, that is where things get fishy. This is how widespread misinformation is maintained on adult humans. Create an unwarranted sense of prestige and attach that prestige to the falsehoods. It doesn't matter if two plus two isn't really five, what matters is that if you deny that it is, that either makes you immoral or gives you the status of an uneducated person, that people will look down upon. The factual accuracy of any statement becomes less important than the status and social standing associated with it. What is true and what is said enough to be acted upon become two separate things.

Over the decades, this cycle was used to give humans wrong ideas on how people should be raised, what they should be taught, and how raising and schooling should intersect with one another. Because of these wrong ideas, a lot of changes with negative effects have been made to how humans grow up and how they end up conducting themselves. One such effect is that now, humans are generally lethargic creatures. They lack civil courage. The humans of today, even the ones that see through the veil, start noticing the relentless stream of misinformation and begin to slip back into their original, in-born nature that makes them crave and yearn to swim against the stream, tear down what doesn't work and rebuild it in a way that is functional for themselves and others, even those tend to just calm down and force themselves to continue existing in what is built to attack them, rather than to fight it and create something that is actually made to do what it claims to be made to do.

But don't be fooled by the effects of broken nurture. Deep down, humans are always humans. Kind-hearted, with the best intentions, craving a life of hard work, stability and prosperity and with a strong sense of mutual social responsibility to create, maintain, defend and provide. It doesn't matter how deep they bury it, it is always there, and the more they can't live up to it, the more they suffer, and the more likely it becomes that is breaks out, lashes out and forces the decisions it prefers onto them. Either that, or alternately their defiance to their nature becomes a means to an end, and the return to a world where they can follow their nature becomes the end. These humans are few and far between, but so long as humans exist, so do they."

* * *

Another night on the surface passed. The usual two insisted they still keep watch, the compromise Alphys got out of them, was to take part of Undyne's shift, so that she wouldn't be as tired as she was the day before. Papyrus did not approve of how their guarding arrangement excluded him, seeing as he was certainly a man fit for the job. But he was quick to forgive them, for as they promised, this was the day where it would happen. They would head with him to Carson's and solidify his claim to this beautiful piece of craftsmanship he so dearly wished to call his own. Once they were all done with their particularly small, in some cases non-breakfast, he was the first to stand up and march towards the exit.

The crowd of curious collectors of inane bits of knowledge for their fellow man were not fewer in number than the recent days, but more. "NO NEED TO STAND IDLY AROUND HERE MY FRIENDS, FOLLOW ME!", he shouted with his finger raised as the cowardly guardians of the law made way for him and the other monsters to follow. As usual, his brother was nowhere to be seen when looking back, but that made no difference. In the end, he would be by his side when it mattered, but the humans needed more encouragement as it seemed. "YES! I MEAN ALL OF YOU! WE WILL ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS YOU LIKE IF YOU FOLLOW ME!" What followed was like a parade. With him at the forefront, followed by the rest of their little troupe of Monsters and humans and behind them, a large, scattered crowd of more humans mostly dressed in black and grey, through the streets of the village, to the station with no interruptions.

In-between letting out tickets of their own, or picking out ones that they already had, the reporters attempted at sneaking some more answers out of him. "NOT UNTIL WE HAVE ARRIVED!" He did tell them where they were going. Which meant Sans telling them and him agreeing. The others stood much further ahead on the platform and kept some distance to the humans. It would seem his king and the others were still rather distrusting of their new surroundings. It was good that they had a courageous hero like himself who would lead them through these dark times.

They tried peeling some answers out of Sans, but for once, he was reliable in giving them something akin to "* you're gonna have to direct these to my brother.", all the way until they were there and set off to march to their destination once again. Once they arrived, he urged them to stop and sprinted ahead to get to the salesman.

He slammed the door open and shouted to the startled and slightly cowering fellow: "THEY'RE HERE!"

He remained in place, clinging to the half-door between the outside and the inside of the counter. "* What? Now?"

"YES!"

He must have caught him by surprise indeed. Mid-way between sprinting back, Papyrus turned around to see him stumbling out the door and following him. Undyne was so kind as to use her terrifying presence to keep the equipped onlookers in a half-circle at the distance needed to stay in sight of all the filming devices at the same time. Having arrived with the others, who stood all closely together, he assured himself one more time that the salesman was approaching them, before he began addressing the waiting crowd. "YOU MAY WONDER WHY I BROUGHT YOU ALL HERE? WHY, IT IS BECAUSE I AM TO GET A STEP CLOSER TO REALISING ONE OF MY DREAMS. DREAMS THAT I DIDN'T THINK WOULD EVER COME TRUE. IT IS THIS MAN, WHO WILL MAKE IT ALL POSSIBLE!" He assessed from the bang he heard while announcing his arrival, that the salesman must have hurt himself. "ARE YOU ALRIGHT?"

Ever so slightly out of breath, he came along, limping a bit from the pain in one of his calves. "* No, no, I'm fine..." In spite of having seen where he was going, he was visibly taken by surprise by the overwhelming amount of attention that was suddenly directed at him. He idled for a few seconds, so Papyrus saw it fit to grab him by his shoulder with one hand, and spreading other to the crowd to urge him to speak to the masses. "* Hey there...I'm Sadwick Carson and welcome to Carson's. The Autotrader of your choice." It required him another questioning look at Papyrus, who simply reassured him to go on. He proceeded to rattle down a few pre-scripted advertising slogans, but then was very eager to be on his way back inside again when the daily barrage of questions began to follow.

Papyrus enjoyed this part beyond belief. Most of the questions were so benign and so many were asked again and again, but the gaze of so many people, and how they stopped to listen to his sublime voice, it was thrilling - no - exasperating. They were so easy to please, but it was so fulfilling to do so. More than ever he was content that with declaring himself ambassador to humanity was a good choice that he could live with after all. Once a few of them went further back to film this establishment from the distance and the King stepped forward to address the crowd himself, Papyrus made his way back into the yard and through the door. "SO? DID I PROMISE TOO MUCH?"

The salesman, still shaken up by the commotion, had gone back to read through some documents behind the counter. Sans was leaning onto it's other side. "* Yeah...didn't expect it so soon...or at all." He signed. "* But I guess a deal's a deal." He was visibly stressed.

"* we got the money too, papy's just gotta learn to drive now."

"* That's good to hear then. When do you think you're done."

"* he'll come around."

"THESE ARE WONDERFUL NEWS! I MUST INFORM THE OTHERS!" Sans was still taking another sip from his ketchup bottle when Papyrus left, marching to the rest of his friends with pride.

* * *

The next human reporter stepped forward, stretching her microphone in Asgore's direction. "* Mr. Dreemurr, do you or do you not condemn Dan Victor?" Again with this Dan Victor person? This was the third time this question was asked. He had never heard that name before.

"* I can not make a judgement of a person I haven't even heard of. Further repetitions of this will have to..." Alphys was tugging at his cloak.

"* Uhm...we might know this person sooner than you think." She smiled and tried showing him something on her cell phone, but the noise of the people talking in the background and photos being taken drowned any sound out that this could have had. He saw a plane and people, but it probably didn't make much sense on a tiny screen in a shaky hand without hearing what anyone was saying. When Papyrus arrived back, Sans was leaning onto the fence and winking at his glowing brother. The skeleton was happier than he had been in a long time. They all were, but on that day, he in particular had an extra pinch of precision in the way he marched from place to place.

The next woman stepped forward with a microphone in hand. "* Mr. Dreemurr, do you disavow Daniel Victor or do you not?" Was she serious? He had just told them that this had to wait.

"* For the last time, I have never seen this person nor heard of them, so how can I make a judgement of them?"

The doctor was trying to get his attention again. "* We've got to go. He's already on the way." She gave him that unsure smile that usually meant 'I don't know how to tell you this and I don't even know what it means myself'.

"* You mean now?"

"* Yeah..." Well this was certainly spontaneous.

He looked over to the beaming skeleton who had picked up where he had left off and was responding to some last questions before they would be done. He presumed that they had the time for this. What ever it would lead to. Even though he would have preferred to spend the day in the village, waiting for someone from Salvador to come. But it was a tad early for that, after all. "* Very well, where do we need to go?"

"* All right, everyone, give us some space!" Undyne summoned a spear to motivate the reporters to give them an opening to leave the place. They soon had gotten back to the station, with a lot less people on their coat-tails.

Once they were on the way, Alphys finally pulled her phone back out to show him what she tried to show him before. It appeared to be an excerpt from a news program. The anchor finished up announcing the segment. "* In a surprising move, candidate Victor announced that he would head to Atelia, to greet and inspect the newly arrived 'Monsters' himself.", before giving away the screen to show a middle-aged man with crassly blonde hair and a broad stature with a blue suit over a white shirt and a red tie on, standing in front of a podium with a blue sign in front of it reading the name 'VICTOR' in bold white and red capital letters with the caption 'Bring back Glory!' below it. "* I'm sorry folks, I gotta go. I just gotta go. I have to, okay? I've gotta know who and what we're dealing with, so we can better prepare for 'em on policy!"

Looking up from the now finished video clip, he found Alphys trying to smile at him. He could tell she felt guilty for not showing this to him sooner, but she probably had her hands full as it was. He turned around to ask William about this person. "* He's a businessman from overseas. And running for presidency. If you ask them..." He pointed at the few reporters that were still following them. "* ...they'll probably tell you things along the lines of him despising puppies and having human babies for breakfast." Asgore raised his head and was about to ask how he meant that. "* No, of course not in the literal sense. I'm exaggerating. Of course they keep it within the bounds that the average person can believe."

He had been smiling ever since Alphys told them about this Victor person coming here, but he was silent until Asgore asked him. He was wondering what William knew. "* What are you thinking about this?"

But he just shook his head. "* I'm not thinking anything just yet. I'd like to see how this plays out, first. If I get a chance to meet him, all the better, but I haven't until now. I'll drive you around, but don't go to me for advice on this, with all the circus around him, who knows anything really?" He went on after they left the train to head back to the hotel. "* This is all bizarre enough as it is, I just want to see where this goes."

Everyone got into the vehicle. Upon asking her, where to go, Alphys told them to head to the same airport they were at last time. William didn't know the exact route any more, so he typed it into that little device that was built into the console - he called it a navigation system. The way there was much more relaxing without having cars full of armed officials 'escorting' them on the way there with a bad feeling on what was going to happen to them. This time, they were coming of their own free will, and on their own accord.

When they came around the complex, there were already people crowding the entrance, and all the more on the other side. The gate to the compound, other than last time, was just open for anyone to enter, and an enormous crowd of people, some of them reporters, some of them everyday people with normal casual wear and often with red summer hats on, not all of them human, were gathered around a stage with another podium much like in that video clip Asgore was shown in the train to the village, built in the shadow of the looming giant above. The plane from the video, a huge dark blue one - a personal jet that was bigger than a lot of the commercial jets at the side. To say that this person made pompous entrances was an understatement.

Getting through the crowd was impossible, so the group settled with standing at the side of the stage, with Frisk sneaking through the masses to stand next to a group of four Temmies that were standing on top of each other, and Alphys, too small to see above the grown humans in front of them, desperately stretching her cellphone upwards to try and get an image through her camera. Sans had disappeared, but when looking around to get a hold of where the child was, Asgore saw he was at the very front, next to Frisk and the Temmies.

At this point, multiple armed security guards left the plane and guarded both sides of the mobile staircase. After they were in position, out came the man from the video clip, casually waving at the cheering crowd as he descended the steps and got a few steps back up to get on the stage. He held his hand open and nodded from time to time, until he finally reached the podium and tested whether his voice came through before he went on. "* Wow, this is incredible - incredible! I'm in the wrong country, and I got this kinda crowd anyway." He paused to let the crowd cheer. "* Ya know, you all probably think I just came for the Monsters, but that's not even really true - my son's got some business to attend an' I thought I'd take him up on that opportunity and come along. Let's just get into policy while I...oh, I see some of those Monsters already came along for front row seats. Make some space for 'em! Don't be shy, come up here." He was pointing at the two at the front as well as the Temmies. Sans stood by Frisk, who was a bit hesitant at first, but the Temmies moved through the breach around the stage at once, which gave the other two some confidence to follow up as well.

Once they were all next to him, the Dan picked up the microphone and held it in front of the upper Temmie. She had a summer hat on as well, but instead of the slogan from the podium, it just read 'TOP TEM'. "* Hey, so what's your name?"

"* h0i! Im tEmmie!"

"* ...and you got anything to say for the crowd?"

"* yaya! hoomanz b nayce 2 TEM. anD odder monsTars."

He tried to hand the microphone to one of the lower ones, but predictably, they all introduced themselves as Temmie and didn't have much else to say.

"* So that's how it goes, huh? Okay, then how about you?" He went over to Sans. "* You look kinda like a skeleton with all those bones...are you one?"

Sans just shrugged. "* yeah, guess that's pretty accurate.."

He went on to Frisk. "* And you? Are you one of 'em too? 'Cause you look pretty human to me..."

Between sneezes - he was given a handkerchief by the man, Frisk answered in short and plain words. "* I am human."

"* Well that sure sounds like there's a long and interesting story behind it. But enough of the charade." He walked back to the podium and started shouting. "* I've seen the rest of you all the way over there! Come on, folks, make some space for them to come through...come on!" More and more of the crowd noticed Asgore and the others and started moving aside, opening a clear path for the five remaining onlookers, who exchanged questioning looks, before deciding to follow up after all. The audience, now turned to them while they were passing through, were pointing all their cameras at them once again, all the way until they got up to be at the side of Frisk and Sans. William stood back outside, but from the growing smile on his face, the king guessed that he was content with staying out of the spotlight. "* So you guys are the one who've been hogging all the media the last few days?" Asgore remained silent for a few more seconds. "* Ah - just kidding, you've gotta be Mr. Dreemurr, am I right? Asgore? Can I call you Asgore?" He turned to the king and stretched out his hand.

If he had traveled across the ocean just to meet them, it would have been impolite not to go along with it. So he shook the stranger's hand, who then proceeded to pull out another cloth to wipe his hands with. Either he was very concerned with hygiene or he was unused to hands such as his own. "* I take it you haven't shaken many hands like these." Asgore held up his hand for all to see.

The Dan just laughed and winked at him. "* I can already tell you're a great guy. So we've all seen you be all shaken up and talking about that project of yours, you got any further with that?"

"* We have found the owners of what we have our eyes on and await word from them that they are willing to negotiate."

Victor demonstratively stroked his chin. "* So you wanna buy a large amount of property..."

"* Yes."

"* And then get some housing built to live in, maybe even rent some of it..."

"* Yes."

"* So basically you wanna break into real estate." He turned back to address the crowd with a grin, while still pointing at Asgore with his thumb. "* Looks like these guys got really lucky today!" For reasons that the king didn't understand at the time, the crowd cheered at once as if on cue. "'* Winner's in my name, real estate's my game. You guys stick around for this one, and then I'll help you guys. Believe me! You won't regret it." He could always back out when things sounded too worrisome, so they remained in place, on the stage, as the man went on to give a lengthy speech. Asgore lacked context for most of his policies and little jokes and quips - of some of them like 'Long-Nose-Ned' and 'corrupt Adelaide - as corrupt as can be' he could assume he was referring to competitors, but he was fond of the idea of Merkantilians not sticking their noses in foreign affairs as they apparently currently were. And given his encounters on their first day on the surface, Asgore wasn't exactly inclined to not believe that it was the case. The crowd would sometimes cheer with certain catch phrases, that only seemed to make sense in context, and sometimes, the businessman would be talking about a policy, and then drift off into an anecdote and completely forget what he was talking about.

It dragged on and on, but telling from the time, this was nothing compared to any hearings or events he would probably have to attend down the line, or speeches of his own. Not before long, it was already over and the masses dispersed, leaving them alone with him. But he stood there in silence, until everyone had left, except William who came up, now that there was no more attention. "* Now, as for you guys. When I first saw you, I knew I had to come here. I had to. I'm not even sure why or how..." Dan eyed up each one of them while going on. "* ...but somehow, every time I see you guys, it's like I remember you - I don't know how - but I feel like I do...wait, where's the little guy?"

Frisk stepped forward. "* Me?"

"* No, the other little guy, the one that looks like you guys." He pointed at Asgore and Toriel. What? "* I feel like I remember you guys but you're one person short." Asriel? Did he somehow know about Asriel? He could only really mean a young boss monster, but how did he remember any of them? He looked over at Toriel, but she seemed as distraught over this as him. They didn't say a word though. "* Nothing? Okay, maybe I've just been imagining things." William, silent up until then, started opening up to the businessman, and explained to him their situation, he even named the owners of the land they wanted to buy. "* Hm...Salvador, ya know I know Julio, he's a really great guy, but he's going through a pretty bad time right now. But I got one of his guys, maybe we can arrange something." He took a few steps back to call someone with his cell phone. At first, it sounded like everything was going smoothly, but then... "* Yeah...no, I got a better place for that...no I'm not overthinking that...so you wanna or not? Okay, Victoresort it is."

With his phone conversation done, he went back to address the king. "* Okay, scheduled a meeting, if we wanna be there ahead of time, we can go there right now." As Asgore looked around, he found the group to exhibit a mix of joy over things jumping forwards like that, and being shorttaken over how sudden it was. "* Unless you changed your mind..."

No, this was perfect. "* Of course not. I will come, as long as at least those two can accompany with us.", he responded, pointing at the local representative and his researcher.

"* Sure, it's not gonna be just the three of us anyway, I've got two guys in the city - they do contractual law - we're gonna need them as well. Ya never know if someone's gonna rip you off, better stay on the safe side."

He was going to head off to the vehicle, but Asgore noticed Alphys' poking on his chestplate. "* I'm sorry, but I wouldn't be much use for that...and if things are really going forward, there's legal stuff have to see for myself." He wondered what this was about, but he remembered being told that the surface's bureaucracy was convoluted. Even if it wasn't, there wouldn't be much reason to force her to come along if she was sure she wouldn't be of help.

"* Of course, let us just leave everyone back at the village. Then you are free to go wherever you like." He stroked her head. He needed her to stop being so nervous. If this continued like this, he would have to find a way to help her build some confidence.

"* That's the Dan-Mobile. Just so you're not afraid of someone following you. It's just us." Dan pointed at quite a lengthy black car before getting in with his security personnel, while opening the window. "* We'll be following you guys, just tell me when you're ready to meet the sellers."

Sans stepped a bit closer, still with his arms in his pockets. "* wouldn't ya call it a victor-mobile?"

"* Nah, I've already got one with that name in my home town." After that, he winded his window back up and got ready to be chauffeured around, while Asgore and the others still had William drive them around. The representative was more or less on a vacation. He couldn't rely on him to be their driver forever. Maybe Papyrus' anticipation with that car was a good motivator for him to learn to drive soon and serve as a replacement for if and when William needed to get back to work. With all the others dropped off at the Hotel, he and William made to follow the Dan-Mobile, wherever it was going to lead them.

* * *

She couldn't fall back now. If Asgore thought she could add anything to what Asgore and this befuddling candidate were going to do, then he was mistaken. She hadn't nearly read up enough for this, what if she got nervous and botched it somehow? Alphys knew that she couldn't do much here, but she knew she had to accelerate her part of this. She thought she could relax, that all this was going to go slowly and smoothly, but all this excitement right away again? If this really went as fast as the Dan made it appear that it would, then she was way behind. Most of the volunteers weren't doing much any more, and what most of them wrote to her in terms of what they needed for legal reasons was too hard to believe. She had to go and see for herself. She had written out one office that would be within the ones that they needed.

"* So? What's all this about?", Undyne asked, sitting next to her in the train.

Alphys hesitated, but realized she could share her worries with Undyne. New leaf and all that. "* It-it-it..." She took a deep breath and formulated what she would say, before she opened her mouth. This all made her way too nervous. "* Either our 'research' team isn't making so much of an effort or things are looking pretty bad. Before Asgore gets much further with this deal, I have to know how to get the permits we need, and what the scope of that it." She looked down to her, but she didn't seem to understand. "* What if they get that done and it all comes to a stop because of this? What if I should have spent the rest of yesterday, or before yesterday doing this and show up empty handed? What if we can't move on just because of me? I've got to know..." She stopped and caught herself having started to gnaw on her claws again.

The reason was that without a word, the Captain's arm was wrapped around her and she was getting squeezed by Undyne, with her head resting on Alphys' shoulder. "* You're worrying about this way too much. Just look forward to it. We can get a big house, with stairs and guest rooms...maybe a garden..."

"* I'm not that comfortable up here yet."

This didn't gether to stop though. She just rubbed her face along the lab coat and went on. "* Then maybe we can get you a big comfortable basement, with shelves for manga, maybe a little lab, whenever you get all worked up like that, just picture all of this. And remind yourself that it will be real. Count on it." She couldn't even say anthing to that. She just stayed in place until they were at their destination.

But even as they got out, she wasn't sure. What if she was right? Undyne never bothered with these kinds of things, every time her house got destroyed, either Alphys or someone else took care of it. The building they were looking for, was a tall, blocky office building. A look at the time showed that if they had arrived two or one-and-a-half hours later, it would have already been too late. All these state offices on the surface seemed to have extremely short work hours, the only difference was that this one had really late ones. The woman at the counter referred them a few stores up. The floor was made of wide, clean and shiny tiles, and the counter solid but smooth black ceramic as well and a lustrous chandelier hung from the ceiling.

To their luck, there even was an elevator, so they didn't have to take the stairs. When they left it, they came into narrow, yet comfy corridors with smooth white plastic walls and a blue carpet floor. Picture frames hung between the doors, bearing random sets of strokes with different colours as if they were pictures. In a larger alcove with leather settees, reading a news paper, sat an Orc, presumably waiting for his turn. The woman at the counter downstairs had explained to them, that they needed to ask Mrs. Greene first and then wait, so this was probably the waiting area. To her positive surprise though, when she knocked on the door with the right number, she and Undyne were asked to come in and found themselves in another narrow office with another middle-aged woman at the desk. "* Can I help you?"

Still unsure and surprised about her not showing much surprise to see the two of them, Alphys picked out her phone to look something up. "* Y-yeah we want to know if we can get a permit for using - pine - for a - home construction."

The office woman fetched a sheet from one of the many piles on the shelf next to her. "* Yes, I assume it's about the new law on cutting procedures? Here it is, that would be fourty."

"* Uh...fourty?"

"* Yes, the service fee per permit."

Her captain didn't so much approve of her throwing money around like that, but a little investment for recon was nothing bad. "* Okay, here you go."

"* You will need proof that the wood you're using comes from a manufacturer that is certified to meet the new standards."

"* Aand if I got that done, I can use pine for houses, right?"

"* Do you have all the other laws covered?"

All of them? She had looked this up extensively to know ahead of time, but this was a bit much. This had to be some sort of joke. "* Pl-Please tell me I don't need an extra p-permit for each one..." She caught herself gnawing her claws over thinking about what was dawning on her again. But she didn't care this time.

The woman just gave her a cold, aloof look. "* If you want this done, you will have to go through every step."

Her reaction to all this must have been visible, at least to Undyne, as she was now pinching her asking her what this was about. "* You're getting pretty worked up. What does all this mean?"

She couldn't tell her. This was bad. Much, much too bad. But she had to tell her. Undyne would understand. She always did. She just had to trust her. When she pulled herself together, Alphys noticed that she had been trembling. She just went on to do what she did before when something like this was no more than a horror fantasy. After a deep breath and the time she needed to get it all together, she grabbed her captain by both arms. "* Take this permit for fourty, multiply by one hundred and thirty five laws, then for simplicity multiply this with every single component, material and process but most have more than that. All types of wood we use, every type of metal, different kinds of concrete, glass for windows, doors and windows, handles for doors and windows, staircases, ceramics, every component of a bathroom - we all need bathrooms up here!"

As she went on and on, Undyne was understanding what was happening, seeing as she looked more and more angry. And not even at her. As Alphys was about to go on, she took a decisive step towards the desk and pointed at the unfazed woman. "* You're kidding, right? There's no way anyone can do all this!"

"* These regulations are in place and yet there are buildings outside and companies that build more. So it's obviously not impossible to work through. If it looks like it can't for you, you only have yourself to blame."

It only made the captain even more mad. She took another step, eyes wide pupils narrow. "* Now you better tell me that this is it. If we were to somehow get all these, then we can build that village, right?"

"* Well, you can build your house then..."

"* I said village..."

"* And I said house. If you want to build a second one, you need every permit twice."

Alphys' tries at pulling her back and getting her to calm down were in vain. Her jaws were visible already, but they looked all the more scary now that she was stretching out with her screams, pointing a new formed spear at her. "* There is no way! Extortion! Blackmailing! There's got to be something about this that's against the law!"

"* Security!" The official, finally reacting in some way, shrieked back when this happened, when she realized that Undyne wasn't coming closer, she pressed a button on her telephone. "* Security! I'm being threatened!"


	15. The greatest deal

A Doctor's Duty

Chapter 04

The Greatest Deal

* * *

"Among other things, their trained lethargy causes most humans to constantly confuse 'nice' or 'kind' with 'good'. A nice person will avoid any confrontation or conflict at any cost. Which means of course they will accept anything that someone proposes to impose on them, which is perfect for the powers that be. But being nice is not only self-destructive, if and when they start speaking for others and keep being nice, that will have destructive consequences for these others as well. The key point is that traits such as kindness, compassion and empathy are only good so long as one can assume them to be mutual, in that if the situation was reversed, the other side would show kindness as well. But in today's world with hostile races being in their vicinity and even among their own being surrounded with traitors, one cannot safely assume that any compassionate decisions are reciprocal. You give the wrong person a leg up and they try to use it to climb over you and stomp you into nothingness.

A good person is an entirely different thing. A good person assesses the situation and judges people based on it. They work for the good of those they deem trustworthy, while not doing the same thing for traitorous and hostile elements. They are ruthless, merciless and cruel, but you shouldn't falsely assume those to be the traits of a bad person. When faced with ruthless and cruel opponents, the only choice you have is to be ruthless and cruel yourself, at least if you wish to succeed in your endeavours. One of the worst mistakes you can make is to confuse good people, who work for the good of mankind, for bad people, simply because you don't like their methods."

* * *

After a short stop at the bank to make sure the money was still there and to request a few documents they would apparently need, the king and the MEP followed the black limousine. They were led to the inner districts of Enkate City, past the entrance with white pillars on both sides built in the style of ancient amphitheaters as only seen on pictures from the Centaurs' reservation and into an underground car park. You could already see the multicoloured lights of the vast rows of gambling machines in the ground level hall. Asgore already knew the vibrant play of lights from a similar place that Mettaton's brand had spawned. A place where monsters from all over the underground would come for a vacation on which they would - often willingly and only for a thrill that it gives them - lose vast amounts of gold in games in which the odds were stacked against them.

William explained to him that leaving here would be impossible otherwise, which was the reason he gave for them occupying two parking spaces next to the Dan-Mobile that their new acquaintance was getting out of. Their side door was already open and Asgore was about to remove one of his shoulder pieces but was interrupted by the Dan. "* Nah, nah keep those on. Ya need to be respected. Keep it all on." With several security guards moving along closely around the businessman, they made for the path upwards. "* When we negotiate, you can't afford to give him an inch. If you can put something more on to look intimidating, do it."

Up one store and through a double door, they came back to the main hall they had seen when first passing it. The yellow light from the lamps and the red carpet gave the place an evening atmosphere, even when it was broad daylight outside. The hall was filled with a large square of rows of gambling machines, some of which seemed to differ from one another. To the left hand side from where he stood, was a very wide counter with shelves behind it filled with bottles of varying colours and sizes. Even at this time, people of all sorts of races sat at the machines wasting their money or on one of the stools of the counter, also wasting their money but doing so by spending it on alcoholic beverages.

To their right, where Dan was moving ahead and looking back so as to signal to them to follow them, there was an extension to the room, with a set of open double doors with curtains behind them. Behind the curtain was a storage room with a few more of these machines and stacked-together billiard tables, but he didn't have much time to look around, because the businessman had already vanished behind the curtain of another double door that they swiftly followed him through, past a turn to the left, another turn to the left, and then a lengthy corridor until they came to a dark room with a cold floor. Strange foam structures were plastering the walls and the room was rather plain, except for a table and several chairs in it. If his sense of direction wasn't wrong, they should have been back in the entrance hall, but this was a separate, sealed-off room. Behind these walls lay the noisy entrance, but he couldn't hear anything. It was soundproof.

"* He's gonna be here pretty soon. Reg..." Dan turned to one of his staff members. "* I'm gonna need a laptop and I'm gonna need you to cool the place down when he comes. Make him a little more uncomfortable." He walked over to take one of the chairs and sit at the table opposite to the corridor that led to the room and checked his hair. "* Anything around that place, right? If you got any special preferences, now's the time to show me." When the employee he had sent came back, he went right on to ask him to plug it to the projector. After a few cables being connected, the display of a computer was projected to the one side wall that wasn't covered in foam. With the laptop placed on the table, the Dan was opening up a map, zoomed in on Farfoot village and circled the green and yellow squares and trapezoids around it. "* So that's the area you wanna buy, right? How far out?"

"* As much as possible."

Mr. Victor chuckled in surprise. "* Aiming high. I like it. Let's see how much we can tickle outta those greedy bastards. Gotta keep an eye on the sum though. With property it's like with everything else. If you get it wrong, you can spend everything and gain little to nothing. And the bigger you shoot, the more dangerous it gets." He took another look at the map, but seemed a bit more concerned. "* We're gonna have to see how much of it they...wait we can look that up." He opened up something else and got another interactive map. But instead of just displaying images of the area as if you would look at it from the sky, it was laid out in crass unicolour segments. "* Let me just...there. This whole area right here the green one, belongs to Salvador. That's all you can get. From them at least."

He could have said or thought that it wasn't perfect, but the more closely they examined it and compared one spot after the other with the other map, it was more and more clear that this was exactly what he had hoped for. If he got everything, he could more than triple the radius of the village's size, and even after that, the new monster villagers would still have fields of crops around to serve as a relaxing view and provide them with the fresh air of the countryside. Now he just had to hope this negotiation would succeed. That he could buy even close to this much without wasting too much of what would have to last for a long time. "* One thing though." The businessman's voice had taken on a darker tone. "* If you're gonna do this, you're putting a few farmers out of work - here, here and here. Sure, they might find work elsewhere, but just as a heads up. They won't approve and neither do I. Unless you think of something to help'em down the line, or they find new work with the same employers."

"* Thank you. I will take this into consideration."

"* Just make sure they're looked after one way or another. It's just the result that counts." He had gone back to be as cheerful as he was before. From then on in, they would spend the rest of the time sitting there together, talking. A lot of the time was spent with him just explaining techniques and tricks for negotiation and trading, but Asgore didn't like how a lot of it was based on manipulation and sometimes even would border on deception. Sometimes William would draw the conversation to some of his policies overseas. Sometimes he drifted off into personal stories, but it was a bit more appropriate since this was just a conversation while waiting for someone and not a political speech. They really had to wait a long time, but they weren't running out of things to talk about in detail and when any of them turned thirsty, their guest host just ordered something to drink for them.

The king had long forgotten the time until finally a hasty and grim-looking man in his fourties with greying black hair was escorted into the room, before taking one of the chairs to sit at the table, followed by Asgore and William heading over to sit on the opposite side as was in order. He was accompanied by two other people, they later proved to be a lawyer and a notary. Victor had explained earlier that notaries are the few officials that actually do their jobs, because neglecting their oaths has life-shattering consequences. The stranger shook everyone's hands before he placed both the cases he brought on the table. "* Greetings, greetings, greetings. My name is Roman Sandino. You must be the from the Monsters no-one will stop talking about."

They introduced themselves and after that, Victor and Roman went on to exchange everyday pleasantries. At least for a short time. When it appeared that Salvador's representative was going on with this for a bit longer than expected, the Dan shortened things down. "* All right, no need to beat around the bush much more. I believe you got something we want, and we might have a sum to pay for it."

In one of the cases were documents, the lawyers that followed him in explained that they were a written transaction contract. In the other, another laptop and some more papers, some of which he slid in their direction to inspect. "* This is the area the contract to my left pertains to. I have from multiple sources that this would be what you're looking for." All three of them took their time to compare the maps they had to the map on the contract. They checked every patch of ground multiple times, but it was indeed all that they had. This was what Asgore sought to purchase. He had to go by what he had, so in the worst case, purchasing more than necessary rather than less was his preference, because he could always rent or sell whatever there was too much of.

"* Right. Now for the price." The notary was going to confirm their agreement on any price, but first they had to agree on one. Contrary to what he had 'taught' Asgore just before, the businessman leaned back and said: "* I'm gonna concede you this one - oh thanks, you take one too." A young staff member clad in a red suit like the page at the hotel, had brought them a plate with tiny hors d'hoeuvres on tooth picks that were so small, Asgore couldn't have properly held one without pushing the tiny bite off if he wanted to. "* They're with truffles. Now as I said, you take this one, what's your first offer?"

The representative of the company was pretending to be absent, looking through some pages of the contract with his own lawyer, but froze for a few seconds, when hearing that. "* Ten billion."

The Dan burst out in laughter. "* That's delicious. You're killing us, you know that right? That's gotta be the most blatant try to anchor it I've ever seen!" What was going on? This was flying in the face of the little tricks they had exchanged before. "* But ya know what? Suits me. If we're gonna play it like that, okay. Ten pennies, here you go." The king was aware that he was being facetious, at least to a degree, but he genuinely went out of his way to get his purse and throw a few brown-reddish coins at the man on the other side. "* That kinda stuff doesn't work on me. Try to be real here, okay? No more games." This was the point where he started to look a bit more serious and lean onto the table with his elbows.

They continued bidding prices, sometimes throwing in a little remark here and there. Gradually working towards each other. It was an unending back and forth between Mr. Victor and Mr. Sandino. Until it appeared to Asgore, that something about Victor's demeanour changed. At first it was just in his voice, but then..."* Hundred and seventy five million."

"* Six billion and two hundred and fifty million."

Suddenly and without a word, Victor raised his head and smiled. A very wide and cheeky smile with a raised finger. "* You're a little fast lately...wait a minute...A hundred and sixty million."

"* Six billion and one hundred million."

"* Yeah, it's not changing. Maybe I shoulda paid more attention to what's going on. One hundred and fifty five million."

"* Five and a half billion."

"* One hundred and forty million."

Ramon was shocked. "* Mr. Victor..."

"* One hundred and twenty five million."

"* We need liquidity to regrow what we would lose..."

"* One hundred million." This amused grin of his would not leave his face.

The Salvador representative looked pretty desperate. "* We have shareholders to answer to..."

"* Ninety million."

Asgore wasn't sure what was going on. From his reaction he could tell that what the businessman was doing must have been outrageous in terms of the numbers, so why wasn't Mr. Sandino putting his foot down and threatening not to sell? "* You can't do this to us!"

"* Seventy five million."

He kept on relentlessly torturing the poor man like that, who for some reason acted like he had no market power. But he must have had. They could always just choose not to sell, could they not? He was afraid that this was a bad idea, and Mr. Victor was putting this entire deal in danger, but for some reason he couldn't explain to himself, it was working. And he kept going and going and going and reducing his offer more and more. "* Half a million. And those ten pennies I already gave you are as far as I'm gonna go up." He leaned back and started pretending like this was completely reasonable. Even though upon asking William just to be sure, he found the human politician to be as dumbstruck as he was. "* Deal or no deal?"

A tense, and strained man shot them a pained and frantic gaze. Everyone remained silent and motionless for quite a while. Except for Mr. Victor who looked completely relaxed, with one arm hanging lazily off the back of his chair.

Eventually, Mr. Sandino did move, picked out his cell phone, got off his chair and left for the corridor. For a second, a shadow clasped the whole of Asgore's back with the thought of this being ruined, but then he noticed the lawyer and the notary were still there and so were the open cases. In the distance, he could hear him talking in a language that he remembered from far to the west. He was very worked up over Mr. Victor's insolence and was apologizing again and again, even asking his probable superior to reconsider and give him the option to refuse the deal. Soon after that, he came back. "* Si...si..." He either hung up or was hung up on, but he put his phone away either way. "* All right. Have it your way. Half a million it is."

Before things went any further, Asgore preferred to ask William for his opinion. "* Half a million...is that much?"

But he looked as perplexed as ever. "* That's an expensive car. But for property...at least this amount...absolutely unthinkable. I have no idea what's going on."

"* A great deal, that's what's going on.", the Dan interjected making a 'perfect' hand gesture and pursing his lips in a very strange way that bore his teeth while saying it. Mr. Sandino - now fuming and calm at the same time - gave the notary green light to add and confirm the price with a stamp he brought along. What followed was a long period of lawyers on Victor's side going through the entire contract once more. Page for page. Just to make sure that all was in order. Which despite re-checks causing it to take extremely long, proved to take three times as long, because it required signatures on 'all three' contracts, a copy for each party and one for the notary. During the entire ordeal, everyone remained silent. Mr. Sandino was looking down at the table, defeated and Victor sat in place with his grin.

When it was all done, most of the humans left together with Sandino, leaving the three of them behind as they watched and waited for them to leave in silence. It was only when even Asgore couldn't even remotely hear their steps any more, that William asked: "* So what exactly happened just now?"

"* A great de..." William was giving him the Dan a very annoyed look. "* Sometimes, you gotta keep an eye on the circumstances. I told you guys, Julio is having a bad time right now. His daughter disappeared, and the media are telling people there's nothing known on that, but whatd'ya think why they're all so worked up? There's a blackmailing letter and everything. I just didn't know what the letter was about. But then I came here and met you guys, and then I see his company happens to own exactly the property you want. Ya know under normal circumstances, he could just not sell, right? But his friend Ramon was going down with the price a lot faster than I'd otherwise guessed, and in the end, it was obvious. He had instructions to sell it at any cost." He pointed at Asgore. "* You got yourself a guardian angel. I don't know who, but someone really wants you to build that village."

* * *

After a very embarrassing episode of Undyne, under angry screams, getting dragged down the stairs and out of the building by the security personnel and Alphys being escorted out with her, they found themselves back in front of it. She was just cowering together and thinking about what to do from here, while her captain got back up and walked over to her. "* That could have gone better." Alphys shrugged together when she felt her captain's hand grab her shoulder. "* Come on...this is going to work out somehow."

"* It's as bad as I thought. We're coming back with nothing." She didn't want to look back up at her. She just wanted to go back to the lab and crawl into a corner.

But Undyne was a bit more persistent. "* There's no way you could get all this together, even if you went from place to place nonstop." She wasn't saying anything, but she did look Undyne in the eyes. "* Now let's go. I'm sure you can think of a place to grab something to eat. That'll cheer you up." She wasn't so sure about that. But if she said so, how could she say no? They were in a less remote area here than where they had to go last time, so she did find a nice little place in a narrow alley that served miso soup. Didn't change the fact that they drew the eyes of anyone they passed. To the failure that she was. She was a doctor. A doctor's duty was to move her people forward one way or another, but even with as menial work as going from place to place to fill out files she couldn't get anything done.

This didn't shake Undyne in the slightest though. Throughout the way, the wait for their meals and when they got to it, she would always smile and try to cheer her up. Then again, it wasn't like it wasn't working. It was just that Alphys knew that her state of mind wouldn't change anything about the fact of the matter. Asgore...she phased back in. "* Asgore?"

"* Yeah. I'm sure he's not going to hold it against us. He might even know how to move forward from here. I mean - it's not like we didn't try, right? He's still good old Asgore." After flashing her another jaw-revealing smile, she went on to slurp up the noodles from her soup. With a stuffed belly, Alphys calmed down. Undyne was right. No matter whether he put his foot down that one time two days ago, he was still Asgore, and hopefully, he would find a way to solve this. With one last deep breath, her fears were wearing off, and she got to appreciate the small but lively place they had found. There were people all around, some were couples, some were just groups of young adults, sitting down having a good time who seemed not to have a worry in the world. The others around were so busy with their own meals and conversations, it was like being comfortably isolated all over again. She had to remember this place and revisit it.

And nothing more was said on all the way back. Through the streets, waiting for the train, getting on the train, waiting to get back to the village, even back at the reception, she collected their key without uttering a word. It wasn't even that it was night, it was only just getting dark. She just didn't feel like opening her mouth until she had some kind of clarity on how things would go from here on in. How would Asgore take it? Would their work turn out to be in vain? More worryingly, how was everyone else going to take it? She sat down on the chair, turned her cell phone into a laptop and called up that website they were watching 'Hasu no Kenja' on. Undyne got up from the bed and wrapped her arms around her from behind, but she didn't tell her off. Instead, when she saw what she was doing, she went to the other side to fetch a chair to place next to hers. And they spent the rest of the time like that. Marathoning anime with an open window at the side to see and hear the passing cars in front of the hotel. After a certain time, she was aware that he would sleep over anything he was told anyway, but that didn't change her stance on telling him as soon as she could. It didn't matter how often, whenever she heard something pass she got up to check.

It had long been dark, and they were already half-way into the first season, when the motors she heard, finally were the ones that she was waiting for. She just got up, opened the door and left with Undyne, who locked the door behind them. When she paced outside, Asgore and that businessman the humans were so enthusiastic about were still talking through the window of his limo. "* Uh..." She got their attention, but saying anything was hard, not to mention finding the right words. "* U-uh A-a-a-Asgore..." They stopped to turn to her. Oh god, they were staring right at her, waiting for her to say something. "* I-I-i..."

The expression on her king's face eased up. "* What is it, Alphys?" He stepped closer to meet her half way and encourage her to go on. "* Speak your mind. Did you find what you were looking for?"

"* I-I...i..."

"* Come on!" She felt Undyne's hand push her forward. "* He's not going to be mad. Just tell him."

"* Asgore...I have bad news. Very bad news. I don't think we can get this all done at all. There's all these laws for making and using materials and other things and so you can do anything, you need confirmation that you'll obey them all, but to confirm that you obey each one you need a permit and seeing how many we'd need, all the time, the money...it's impossible..." Throughout the entire time, she looked down. "* I'm sorry, but I failed."

"* Permits?" It was Mr. Victor, who had still been watching and listening from his limousine. At least until then. At this point, he was just laughing. "* No wonder you think you failed! Permits! Hey! Come over here!" He beckoned them to get closer and they followed suit. "* You're that lizard doctor my son keeps talkin' about. He seems to know a lot from you. I don't even know where from." He shrugged, while she blushed at the thought. His son? Where would some human she never met know things 'from her'? On the other hand...she had an inkling of where from. She was the lizard doctor after all. She was lizard-sensei. "* Listen, what you were tryin' to do - if you had actually somehow succeeded, I'da hired you for a high paying job on the spot, no hesitation - believe me. Because this is impossible. You're not supposed to be able to do that, that's just to block out newcomers. But if Asgore here - wants to, we can get this outta the way, right tomorrow. No need to worry about anything. That a promise?" She didn't know what to say. Was this possible? Was there some different way she had no idea of? Maybe she had no way of knowing. But judging from what she had seen, how could she turn down that kind of offer? She swallowed down her doubts and nodded. "* See, much better. Hey, Asgore! We meetin' and doing this?"

"* I wouldn't see why not. Any help in bringing us forward, I will thankfully accept." He then turned straight to Alphys, walked closer, bent his knees to level with her and placed a hand on the shoulder that Undyne left open. "* In the future, if there is anything, even if it is bad, don't worry about coming to me. You can always tell me, you have nothing to be afraid of. Even if you come back empty-handed, what matters most is - always - that you come back."

* * *

After sleeping over this, Asgore was extremely relieved that Mr. Victor would help them on this issue that had Alphys so distraught. This time, he insisted they stopped by the bank once again, but for different reasons. He resumed talking to him right away again after they both left their vehicles. "* Ya know they could have relieved you of one or a few billion if you'd just done this on your own. I saved you quite the bit of money. So now I'd like you to bear with me. Five million. If you keep five million of this insane amount of money you got reserved for resolving legal issues, I can make it so you're left alone for fifty years. Half a century. Is that a deal?" Walking through the automatic doors, they were greeted by the clerks, after which the Dan went on to ask him to withdraw half a million in paper bills and dropped a large, green bag on the table, implying that they would stuff it all in there. At first, the clerks were very worked up over this demand and even tried to convince him not to, but a reminder that it was his money strictly speaking, a little persuasion to make them overlook possible legal concerns and a display of overwhelming self-confidence resolved the issue and they soon stood there with a large sports bag filled to the brim in valuable paper.

"* Ya see, here's how this works. What your lizard doctor's been saying isn't wrong. You go through all the official channels, you cross countless officials who all want their cut, the amount of confirmations and ratifications you need, turn creating a single building into a year of legal groundwork and that's all disregarding the fees for all the permits and official processes. There's of course a small set of very large multinationals, that get waved through all of it for free, because they got cover-all licenses. And because no-one else can compete, they can increase their prices at their own whim. It's like a cartel, only that it's legal. What she was doing was you guys playing by the rules. Don't play by the rules. The game is rigged." He didn't immediately get back in his car, but stood in place to go on until he was done.

"* The game is rigged, okay? Only stupid people play by the rules. You and I - we can't afford to be stupid. We wanna get into the game even though we're outsiders, right? So here's what we do. I know a guy - a great guy - he works in the central office for home safety and workplace stability. He orders a bunch of other offices full of people around. I introduce you two, you drop this by..." He raised the bag, which he then went on hand back to him. "* ...and they leave you alone for the next five years. Solid agreement, they do this routinely. If he gets replaced, next one continues his extra cash flows as if nothing happened." Finishing up he clapped his hands together, wiped them clean with a napkin and got into his car. This was bribery. Cold, cruddy bribery. And he was talking about it as if it was everyday business. He tried to just be patient and endure it, but it blurted out of him against his will. "* This is bribery."

It sounded accusatory, but the human, now looking out of the window of his already closed door wasn't the least bit shocked or offended. "* Yeah it is in a way. I like to call it generous persuasion. Everyone does it. Even the big businesses do it, 'cause they save money on all that they do. Building cheaply and improperly and bribing the watchdogs is cheaper than doing everything in order. All the better if you got your own people putting your places together. Now come on, let's get going."

With this, his window slid back up, and the limo got ready to head out and waited for Asgore and William to ready themselves as well. Once he was back inside with the side door closed and locked safely, William spoke up. "* Let me guess. You have scruples about this."

"* It isn't right. Methods like this always affect the greater framework badly in the long run."

They got ready and left to follow the Dan-Mobile anyway. "* I know, I know. But this is the world we're in right now. If it makes you feel better, it's so widespread and universally used and people are so sloppy about it, that even if you did go the impossible route, no-one would believe you. It's just too hard to believe anyone would do it differently. At least anyone who keeps their eyes open. This is what the world has become, and it would probably be better to adapt to it."

No. He refused. With newfound resolve, he grabbed the right seat to pull himself back up and look William over the shoulder. "* Any pretense of adaptation will be temporary. I live long and my people at large can take their time returning up here. I will find ways of changing it back, once we have a solid footing and work our way into independence. It will take long. Possibly decades even, but that doesn't mean we won't do it."

"* Well, your highness surely has very high ambitions." William laughed. In part cheerfully, but also with a hint of bitterness. It didn't sound like he believed what the king said to be possible. The place they were led to was not quite in the inner city. They did drive through it, but they followed through roadways that led to a large suburb just outside of it. Up the cliff of another mountain, he saw rows of large family homes of elegant design and on the way downtown, they passed by more streets lined with more of them. They even came across a few skyscrapers, until the Dan-Mobile parked near a ten-story building lined with an arc lining it's entrance and extending all the way to half of it's height. The bottom floor's ceiling was a lot wider than the rest of it and was supported by thick, cylindrical pillars, while the actual interior was mostly surrounded by a half-circle of flawlessly clean, all-window walls and an automatic double door for them to pass through.

Glazed planks of wood covered the floor on the ground and to the left and right of the smooth and rounded-off reception table were marble staircases. The white ceiling was covered in lamps with adorned shade rings, and as expected, they drew the attention of the elderly women at the table at once. "* Mr. Victor, how's the candidacy."

"* Kinda rocky at the start, but we're getting there. I wanna meet Mike, is he here?"

The one on the right dialed a number on a comparably archaic-looking telephone. "* Mr. Staton, you have a visitor...yes...yes." Judging from the sound, the person on the other side hung up. "* He'll be ready to receive you. Please continue." With two security guards accompanying them, the three of them ventured up one of the staircases and into the first door they led them to. Behind it was another room with clean, white walls and a wide, elliptical working desk with a computer and several files and a few books at the side. The man that sat at the desk got up immediately to greet them all.

"* Mike! There ya are! Meet my new friends William Fenkel and Asgore Dreemurr." After a few handshakes and chairs being pulled to the desk, everyone was seated and ready to negotiate. "* You probably heard about him and his folks in the news. They got a big thing they wanna do, and they're gonna need your help. They got a lotta projects coming up, and we'd be very thankful if you weren't too strict on them. So I thought how about you get to know each other? Maybe even bring you a greeting gift." He gestured Asgore to hand him the bag, which he then placed on the table, opened and pushed to the expensively clothed official. The Dan went on while his 'friend' was still inspecting the money. "* Half a million in cash. On the hand, right now. Whaddya say? Ten years?"

"* Well three years of being on good terms sounds all right."

"* Did you say three? I was pretty certain I said eight."

The man on the other side looked up at the ceiling and stroked his non-existent goatee. "* No, I'm absolutely sure you said four."

"* Well how about those seven years? You up for it?"

"* Five years it is." Mr. Victor got up and after another handshake, it seemed like their bargain was concluded. But...five million, fifty years...the Dan had bartered knowing precisely what result they would come to before they even started. How in the world did he do that?

When Dan returned, he went on to explain to Asgore: "* So you gave him the first bit now. Five years from now, you ask to meet him again. Or - whoever sits in this exact office, on that exact chair." He pointed at Mr. Staton. "* Next time, you bring another half million and so on and so on. We agreed on the price now. As long as you keep paying, any government shakedowns avoid anything you build. If ya learn how to get around and make money in half a century, you can prepare some cleaner ways by then. How about this?"

He stayed motionless for most of it, seeing as he didn't know how they would react to the expressions of the first boss monster they would see. But he responded nonetheless. "* To be perfectly honest, it sounds like protection money."

Dan, leaning on one of the rests of his chair, nodded. "* Yeah...it is kinda like protection money isn't it?" Everyone around him nodded in agreement. "* But if you're seeing it that way, we're not the mobsters demanding it. We're a messenger telling you about the deal at worst. If you're looking for the guys that run this shindig, you'll have to get all the way to the top. Even as president I won't get as far as to be that myself."

"* Speaking of which..." Mr. Staton went on to draw Dan into a long conversation where they talked about mundane aspects of life, business, politics, the general state overseas and how the Dan fit into all of it. He and William stayed as not to break any local customs, but waiting it out was not nearly as tiring as those times during the purchase of the land around Farfoot. They soon came to an end. "* ...yeah, but all in all, you can't solve all the world's problems, no-one can. All we can do is our best to solve a few."

"* True words. Fine then. Thank you for coming by. I presume I'll see you again not before long?"

"* Let's hope on the televisions everyday. If our fluffy friend here stops hogging all the news cycles that is." The Dan gave the king a pat on the upper arm. "* No, I'm serious, I need the coverage."

With a laugh, they departed, crouching through the door to the office and back down the stairs. The king found it hard to believe that this was so easy. "* Is this really it? Can I now really have underground contractors build without worrying about this?"

"* My friend, you could have your grandma make foundations for all that anyone cares. This guy collects money from everyone who's anyone in real estate. Almost any house or plant or stadium you find in this city has an owner somewhere that pays him. And maybe he passes cuts of it down, but nonetheless, that's how the system works. He accepts smaller amounts than your feature-length-thriller version that a lotta normal people think of, and to make up for it - more than that actually - he collects 'em from everyone."

Once they left and waved the women at the ground level good bye, Victor stopped once again before setting off. "* Ya know, now that all that's wrapped up - as soon as Salvador's lawyers send you all the documentation - you're good to go. That said...I'm pretty much done what I came here for. I think it'd be time for us to leave again. How about I schedule our departure for this late afternoon and you guys attend it? C'mon, I've done so much, gimme that one thing." Asgore laughed and told him that he would see what they could arrange. He didn't know what the others were up to, after all. But he couldn't ask him to stay longer either, he was probably a very busy man who had his reasons for only staying in one place for a very short time.

He called them one by one on the way back.

"* so soon? kay, we'll be comin' around. c'mon we gotta go. " "I AM NOT DONE WITH THE MEATBALLS YET!"

"* Right on, Asgore. We're here and ready any time." "* You can't tap into the Lilac Leyline!" "* Try and stop me, Karada-gochou!"

"* ...don't call this number..." "* Is it Dad?...Yes of course we're here."

They were going to have to wait for the skeletons. He was woken up from staring out of the window in his thoughts, halfway back. "* So, aren't you excited about things moving forward?" William was still driving, but striking up a conversation regardless.

"* I will save the excitement for when I see the construction progress with my own eyes."

"* Well that's...disappointingly mature." They both laughed.

When they arrived at the hotel to wait for everyone to gather up, the Dan walked off to make some phone calls, while William pulled out his own phone, but to look something up. He bore this smile again that he had the day before at the airport. "* You know, I know why he came here, and why he wants you lot to be there when he leaves."

"* You do?"

"* Yes. I need to strike out a bit for this one. Let's look at some headlines about you, why don't we? 'With no place else to go - Why Monsters need our help and only a sociopath would reject them.' 'Study shows that skeptics of Monster arrival are largely uneducated.' 'Here are five ways in which Monsters enrich our experience.' - And if I were to look up more, there wouldn't be much changing. All of the press is interconnected and they're all trying to make their audience as welcoming to you as possible. A lot of the headlines are really just rehashes from when the Orcs started coming here. Then let's look up Victor. 'Ten reasons why Victor is bad for babies and puppies', 'Fighting injustice one intolerant person at a time - #BeatupaVictorsupporter - the new and hip trend in our cities.'"

"* Hashtag?"

William waved that off and went on. "* Not important, and the third one...'A madman and nuclear codes - why a Victor Presidency means the literal end of the world.' You're seeing a theme emerging aren't you? They despise Victor, because a lot of his policies would make it more difficult for the news stations' parent companies to keep competitors out of their industries."

"* Keeping competitors out...this was what he was..."

"* Yes. He has the same kinds of ambitions as you do. The reason he came here is to take the subjects of two narratives - Monsters good - Victor evil - and force one to be associated with the other. Humans who are inclined to love you without having met a single Monster in their lives are going to have a hard time forgetting how Victor came here to help you lot. The reason he wants you to come along when he leaves is..."

"* Because he plans to do this a second time." Asgore was understanding what all this was leading to. They were both people who saw this world for how rotten it had become. And they both saw how it didn't have to stay this way. He was merciless, ruthless even, but on the right side for once. When he called the skeletons to see where they were, they were already on their way to the hotel, so he soon had everyone stuffed back into the large vehicle and ready to head to the airport. Even though they couldn't have known more than a few hours ahead of time, a similarly large crowd formed around the waiting plane again. Only that this time, a path was kept clear for the minibus and the limousine in front of it to park and walk to the stage without interruptions.

With all eight of them standing behind - this time without the child sniffing due to a running nose - and the Dan gave his speech. He was improvising, but he was working down the exact same points that Asgore had heard last time. Somewhen in-between, in the crowd that reached all the way to the gate, a single person booed. "* Get outta here!", the businessman snarled, as the troublemaker was pushed out. "* Hope that paycheck was worth it!" He continued his speech uninterrupted until he was done.

When he was about to wrap it up, Asgore stepped in and asked whether he could speak as well. And was given the podium without hesitation. The reporters were one thing, but he was speaking in front of such a large human crowd for the first time. If there was any time to talk to the humans about certain things with any hopes of meeting ears that weren't deaf, it was here. "* When I first came back to the surface, I was confused - I had no idea what had happened. What I found to be my former home lands is nonsensical, crippled and dysfunctional, and yet insists on it staying that way. Countless unnecessary laws that turn walking a single step into a reassurance frenzy and an unaffordable investment, yet it demands one walks under these circumstances for miles if one wishes for so much as life and work. I saw people - innocent people - slain by savages, and public voices applauding this or denying it even happened, I saw humans make discoveries that should overwhelm them, but all they could think of was how to use it as a new tool for war. When moving forward seemed impossible, this man came in and showed us that life is not as dire as it seems. It is a simple result of assessing the circumstances we were shown up here, that he has my support." Without any cue or clear signal, the crowd cheered loud enough to be heard on the other side of the complex.

He was thanked by the Dan, who went on to address the people with a few last words. "* I'm a winner, that's what I do. I am determined to win and I've been winning for fifteen years, and we as a country have been losing for fifteen years! I will continue to win, and from next year on, my people will win with me! My glory won't just be my glory, we will bring back glory to the entire country! Thank you, ladies and gentlemen!" With another applause from the masses, he stepped off, took his leave from all the Monsters and headed for the staircase that led into the 'Victorjet'. But before they could watch him disappear into the plane, he turned back around, with a Temmie, that had climbed up the railing and on his shoulder. "* When I'm gone, I got one more surprise for you folks." He pointed at the Temmie. "* At least if this little guy is right, you're gonna love it. Believe me!" These were the last words before - with one last thumbs up for the crowd, he entered his plane with the Temmie on his shoulder, leaving them for themselves with a dispersing mass of people and a group of staff that prepared to remove the stage they were on piece by piece.

To their surprise, a young man in a black suit with curly hair came along rushing up the stairs with a case. He came back outside without the case and stretched his hand out to Asgore and the others, pointing the finger straight at them. After Asgore looking at him in confusion, the man gestured him to move aside, implying that he was pointing at someone else behind him. Gradually, one of them after the other moved aside, until only Alphys was left with him pointing straight at her. She pointed at herself with a questioning look, but the only response she got was the man pistol-winking her with a cheerful smile before disappearing into the plane and closing the door. When the king looked back at his researcher, she was blushing and looking around awkwardly. Whatever he meant, it seemed that he knew her from somewhere.


	16. A surprise trip

A Doctor's Duty

Chapter 05

A surprise trip

* * *

"Before all Monsters of the world were banished, there were many kinds of Monsters the average humanoid Monster from the surface would never have met in their lives. One of these is the Chasmsprout. They share a common ancestor with Vegetoids and other, similar vegetable-mimicking Monsters, but while Vegetoids and the like remained small and to grow on the surface, the ancestor that led to the Chasmsprout became larger and larger, some related subspecies even turned omnivorous. Eventually, the new niche they took for themselves was to dwell in cliffs, very deep below the oceans. Their strength lies in their capacity to remain stable even under the strongest degrees of water pressure, while still being capable of compressing any part of their body to an insane extent which allows them to move through even the smallest gaps and holes in the rocky areas they used to inhabit. They can get through holes less than a meter wide, just to get you an idea."

"INCONCEIVABLE. HOW WOULD THAT BE POSSIBLE?"

"Of course. Just look at what an octopus can get through. Then add to that the fact that a lot of octopi are almost entirely made of matter and have a solid beak. Those are limitations a Chasmprout doesn't have. And on top of all of that, they're not defenseless either. The same strength that allows them to withstand the pressure of their habitat can also be used to squash and constrict predators that would otherwise be a danger to them."

"AND THERE I THOUGHT THEY WERE SO LAME."

"Well, that's because you limited your idea of them to how they got along in the Underground."

* * *

Relentless knocking. At first, it was Undyne making bad jokes and hitting her while laughing, but she soon noticed that no such thing was happening. There was no actual pain, just the tremors and the rumbling. Once she opened her eyes, she looked to the window. She hadn't seen the sun rise often enough yet to tell the time from the angle, but it clearly was still morning. It knocked four times again. "* They are waiting. Undyne, Alphys? You need to get up now." It was Asgore. There were more voices, but his was the loudest. She scratched her head below her frill, pushed herself off the bed and got up to stumble to the door to unlock it.

"* What?" She wasn't really waking up until she was met with everyone else standing in front of the door.

"* At last, up with you two. There are people outside that are waiting."

"STRANGE THINGS ARE HAPPENING."

Still groggy and without asking what was going on, she headed over to the other side of the bed to first poke, then pinch and finally shake Undyne to try and wake her up. "* Just a little longer." She got her to turn around her head, but that was pretty much it.

With a strict and much louder voice, Asgore spoke up again. "* There are people waiting outside."

One sentence of him talking like that was enough to get the captain to stand straight, arms pressed against the body with wide open eyes. With everyone gone, they quickly put lab coat and leather jacket back on to follow them outside. When they did get outside, the parking lot was still filled with people with cameras but this time, there were apparently much more people here on their own time than actual journalists coming here for news material and the parking spaces further ahead were full of lorries so large they barely fit onto their side of the road, with two of them having some sort of crane attached instead of the usual back compartment.

"* Good, we are all here.", Asgore went on. "* Now tell us what this commotion means."

One human, wearing a blue working uniform and an orange vest over it with a safety helmet on his head, stepped forward. "* We've been sent on an irregular assignment. It says here..." He held up his clipboard to read some notes on it aloud. "* We're here to transport a...Chasmsprout? Best regards from Mr. Victor...I was told you would know what a Chasmsprout is." Chasm...Onion-san! Alarmed and under stutters, Alphys pushed her way forward. "* Y-y-yes, we have one that needs a new place. Or maybe the ocean?"

The man nodded. "* Ocean, that sounds about right. We got a team setting up a bigger crane at the cliff over there." He pointed to the distance, but she could tell that this was the rough direction that led to the king's castle. "* You want to get going right now, or..."

"* Of course." Asgore generally sounded a bit rough, this morning. He probably didn't have a very soft awakening either. Without hesitation, he led the group back into the vehicle and corrected William when he would get the road wrong.

Once they were on the right path, things calmed down and he could explain. "* These carrying mats like on those cranes - they usually use them for whales. You don't have whales in the Underground, do you?"

"* The Underground is vast and deep, but whales I have yet to see."

"* At this point, I can't think of much that would surprise me any more."

All of a sudden, Asgore's phone rang. "* Yes?...How did you..." When he answered, he soon put it on loudspeaker so that everyone could hear it. "* What is all this?"

"* So I heard you saw your surprise." It was Dan Victor's voice. "* You like it?"

Asgore turned to the window to get another look at the passing trucks and cranes, of which there were more than it first looked like. "* What is it?"

"* So I met those little guys - the Temmies, right?"

"* meK Merkant0il wok agen!", a Temmie voice called from the background.

"* And they tell me about this huuuge guy who's really nice but he's got a problem - he's got a problem. So they explain to me what the problem is with all the numbers and his size and all and how he either needs a bigger place or he needs to get to the ocean - or the sea in the south - so I say 'How in the world are we gonna get a giant tentacle monster to the ocean?' - and they show me this big plan using trucks and transporting gear and then I noticed, they're right. It adds up. That would work. So here's my last surprise for you guys. I sent you a few teams from water parks - they got instructions but they need the guy...what's his name?"

"* teh naem iz one-ion sam"

"* Yeah One-ion Sam! They don't know where he is and neither do I, you guys need to bring him. They're gonna take him to a little town down at the southern shore - attracts a lotta tourists by the way - with a nice, big beach and it should be a sunny - wait - is it a sunny day? It's still night over here so I don't know." Everyone looked out of the window. The sky was clear and the morning sun shun down with full force, especially crushing everyone with heat ever since they got in the vehicle. Asgore agreed that it was indeed sunny. "* Nice, so here's the deal. You get to bring your friend to the sea and you guys can have an afternoon at the beach along the way. That a nice goodbye gift?" After laughing at all this for a short time, Asgore thanked him for the gift and all the things he had done, asked everyone whether they would like to go with aforementioned plan after all, before dialing right again to call a few people in New Home. The ones responding with cheers at the idea the fastest were Frisk, Undyne and Papyrus. Sans, the grown human and Alphys stayed silent for the time being, but there were no objections. So soon, a decision was made. They would indeed bring Onion-San to the ocean and then try out the human way of relaxing on a hot summer day.

Alphys used the time to look around the internet. Trying to make sense of the Monsters thread - 'Two big guys edition' - was pointless, they were too embroiled in enthusiastically spamming memes about the 'emperor' they worshipped so much. Going anywhere anime-related, she had to watch out not to pick up any spoilers. They were almost done with the first season of 'Hasu no Kenja' and it was more or less predictable, but she wanted to know whether Biran-sama would harness the final petal's force, or whether taking it away was just to give the protagonist another challenge. She was getting lost in thought when she remembered that it was probably better to notify everyone through Undernet. It wasn't like Onion-san couldn't squeeze through narrow openings, but getting him all the way up there would take a lot more time than necessary without the help of the others. And she could always count on the denizens of Waterfall for help when it came to Onion-san.

Walking up the cliff, they saw a humongous crane that had been driven over the grassy plains to look up right where the entrance to the Underground was. Humans were at the top, building and fixing supporting structures that bore the same carrying 'mat' that the crane here and the smaller ones further back were, and from higher up it was visible that the lorries were open on the upper side and filled with water. But even so, there was no way a single one could transport the entirety of Onion-san. How was this supposed to work? Aside from the people that were obviously personnel setting up all this equipment, even with two more sets of those same supporting structures up here, there were also onlookers. Some of the people watching were reporters from back in the village, but on the way up, among other vehicles, she also saw an old couple leave a recreational vehicle, and a sports utility vehicle - she liked looking up what different sets of human machinery were called - full of young men and a woman park at the side and the people leaving it to follow the path to see the spectacle.

She tried telling them that there wouldn't be one for quite some time on the way up, but they all seemed to have taken a lot of time out of their week to see where this went and didn't really care about how long they would have to wait. It was probably the best thing to hurry, but luckily the others were quite fast to speed into the underground. She already had asked the people of waterfall how they got him all the way up here the first time. They had him crawl through the river to Hotland, where they had a moveable water tank set up to carry him to the lift out of Hotland. The thing about Onion-san was that while he needed water, he could squeeze through even very small openings and even compress himself accordingly for a short time as long as he was given the time to do it. The further in she got, the more she noticed that that one phone call Asgore had made on the way here had a bit more of an effect than she thought. The closer they got to his house, the more Monsters and humans were cluttering up the place and making it difficult for her to follow.

By the time she was - under wheezing and heaving from running and trying and failing to keep up with the others because she stood behind talking to humans - arriving at the bridge at a wall in front of Asgore's house, their king was setting up the equipment he had lying around for occasions like these, to hold a speech while looking over New home and broadcast it as far as was possible. At least she could guess that this was the case. She only heard his voice echoing through the place and judged from that, since she couldn't see much over the many Monsters and humans that were filling up the place so much. The closest place there was space to stay in was behind one of the windows of Asgore's house, even there she was surrounded by people - and even from there, she only got to look at more Monster and human backs. He was telling the people what had happened. He told them about the many hardships that the Monsters that tried to leave for the surface faced and why they all came back. He told them how far they had gotten and what he had planned for how to move Monsters out of the Underground not all at once, but very slowly and only those that wanted to leave. He was honest about how most of them - not to say almost all of them - wouldn't be able to leave just yet, but followed up with explaining why he addressed them now in the first place.

"* For the sake of honesty, I need to tell you that even with what we've done, even of the Monsters that really want to live on the surface, not all of you will be able to just yet. That is something I can neither grant nor promise in good faith. I am sorry that the surface didn't prove to be as wonderful as many of you have doubtlessly imagined it to be. I am also sorry, that moving to it as soon as you thought is not possible either. But we must all remember that part of leaving the Underground in peace with the humans also means that we cannot just invade their lands and take their resources as our own or flood them with masses of Monsters and simply demand that they accommodate us. Much like how this applies to each human, we cannot have everything at once and we must earn our fair share in what the surface has to offer before we can partake in it.

But those of you who really want to and see themselves willing and capable to work hard and strive over years to acquire the capacity to provide us with the wealth and resources we need to purchase and build more over time, so that we may make it possible for more to leave this place, I ask to report to us in the coming days. Life and work on the surface takes years of hard work alone just to prepare. Those most willing and capable of a long life of work will be given a home on the surface and the necessary resources to qualify within the human system. It will take long and it will not be easy, but the more resources we acquire - together - the more will be able to leave. I cannot just make everyone's wishes come true. But I can provide you - as a people - with opportunities to make your wishes come true yourselves. Many of you have spent so long gazing at false stars and making wishes. You may not have them yet, but now, the real ones are in reach. So tell me people of New Home - Monsters of the Underground - even if it takes hardship - even if it takes endurance - and even if it takes doing so with your very own hands, are you willing to pursue your hopes and dreams? Are you willing to reach for the stars?"

The cheers of the crowd behind him and the masses below rumbled through all of their surroundings. From where Alphys was and how close it all was, it was like the entire world was shaking. She couldn't endure it and just covered her ears and closed her eyes until it was over. She knew from reaching around over the years. The majority of the people he was talking to - the people of New Home that didn't live on the path that any humans would walk - weren't even that eager to leave, they just loved their king so much, they would cheer on anything he said. She waited until her head wasn't shaking any more. She would be happy to witness these kinds of events in places where there was no ceiling that would send all sound right back to make noisy crowds the experience that they were. By the time things calmed down, the crowd wasn't dissolved, but at least things eased up enough for her to move around.

The commotion that all this staff had caused coming to the village - either that or the last two days - had attracted so many curious humans. Even when she was trying to navigate after the others, they kept asking her questions while she passed. She recognized some of the young adults from walking up the path that were talking to the NiceCream salesman. And wherever she went, more humans were finally spending time with Monsters of various kinds, getting to know each other. Which was fine and all that, but what she was concerned with, was getting Onion-san up there for one, and then one worry becoming very, very real. She didn't like the idea of showing herself in public in a swimsuit, but with where things were going, Monsters taking a first holiday together, probably with attention from all over the world, they would probably expect everyone who could to dress for the occasion and what kind of metaphorical monster would refuse to do that? But she really didn't want to do this. What was she going to do? What if the one swimsuit she had didn't fit? She would have to rush to the city and find one that did. And then doing that in and of itself would be embarrassing too - she would grasp her hair if she had any, all she had were spikes. As far as a human was concerned, she must have seemed completely bald. She sincerely hoped the others weren't freaking out like she was.

* * *

"* It was a bit spontaneous though.", William commented before starting to eat his casserole. The MTT resort was now filled. Every table was taken, some by Monsters, some by humans, some by both. "* Didn't you think announcing something like that a few days ahead would be a better idea?"

"* I don't know about elsewhere, but word gets around fast down here. The area down below isn't like an empty square, but busy streets full of Monsters. And that aside, what better time to address the people about how to move forward after seeing what the surface was like, than when all the commotion attracted so many curious humans to attend it? It was a good way to draw them out of their houses and hiding spots. The sooner and the more humans come in direct contact with Monsters, the less of a reason I have to worry about them acting rashly on fear."

"* Then there's this other thing. It was different when you had the man right next to you most of the time, but now? Why are you so confident with just following the suggestion with no input of your own?"

Asgore laughed awkwardly and looked past him to sneak a peek on all the humans that were sitting around here to try out the MTT resort's menu and taste Monster food for the first time. "* Well the truth is..." The truth was that if the Temmies not only approved of it, but probably arranged for it as well, he had a certain assurance that it would play out well. But that would mean admitting that there was more to the Temmies than meets he eyes after all, and tell that, he could not. "* The truth is that I have developed a good sense for these decisions and for this one, I had a good feeling." The representative still seemed curious, but he accepted the answer.

There was another thing he preferred not to give away, which luckily there was no lead to go on and ask him about, was that he had a trump card. The child. From how far the child came in the underground, it was very apparent that he had that particularly high strength of determination. The one that allowed the most determined person to turn back time. This was the true reason why he willingly followed through when he was offered to be led or brought somewhere. Frisk was determined enough to undo any harm that came to them. The puzzles, the traps, the many monsters that he must have met on his journey, all of which had orders to kill or capture any human on sight, yet somehow he managed to come all the way to the castle without a single real injury. Asgore knew of the power of determination, because he had seen it with his own eyes. The last human he met that had this power, struck terror into the hearts of Monsters and inspired myths of how impossibly strong and powerful humans must be. He dreaded the thought of meeting someone like that once they would find a way to the surface. So it filled him with joy and a sense of irony that determination - the power that played a crucial role in the downfall and banishment of Monsters back then - would then lead to their salvation. What ever happened that caused the barrier to be removed, the power to turn back time and retry overcoming any obstacle one would face and any battle one would be drawn into - it must have helped make it possible.

If it weren't for him, Asgore would probably have sealed and opened the Underground every day, just to make sure that there wouldn't be an unexpected retaliatory attack from the Orcs after his run-in with their chief. And even that was just an additional security measure. If the things he had seen and told painted the same picture together, most of the Orcs here - not to say almost all of them - never had anything like someone standing their ground against them in their lives, not to mention killing them and sparing no-one. How he left the place was a clear message. 'Stay away', and everyone - even an Orc - would understand. From how he knew them, he figured that they were terrified of coming here and subjecting themselves to the same fate and therefore wouldn't even come near this village until they believed that they had something or someone that can take him out. The lack of intel on how Asgore fought caused by him not leaving anyone to escape and tell about it, probably made it all the more intimidating.

The only real questions were whether Toriel was aware of the child's power and to what extent the child himself was aware that Asgore and Sans knew about it. He could understand if he didn't share though. He could even understand if he would never willingly share. The implications of this power were immense. So many things that perhaps happened and then never happened, but the child would still remember that they did. The last person that he knew to be this determined used their powers to kill over a thousand monsters singlehandedly,much, much more with his troops and never regretted it, never changed his mind, never undid it. He had caused so much pain and suffering that he could have undone in a single moment of remorse, yet that moment of remorse he never had. On the day that Asgore learned what determination was - and that it was how it made a single human seem invincible in battle - he vowed that if he ever met someone who was born with this gift once more and they would live on good terms, maybe even use it for good in the end, he would forgive them anything that ever happened, as long as it was undone.

"* Asgore? Asgore she's talking to you."

The king shook his head to find himself facing a tiny human girl and a grown-up - possibly her father or brother. "* Are you the king?"

He laughed. "* Yes, I am the king. How can I help you?"

Suddenly, she was stepping away and looked a bit more intimidated. The other person stepped forward and looked at the girl hiding behind him. "* What's wrong? Don't be afraid now..." He first tried to push her back forwards, but soon gave up. "* I'm sorry, she can't seem to make up her mind. She will probably regret it again if her shying away means you didn't sign this though." He gave him a post card he must have purchased at an MTT-themed gift- or souvenir shop somewhere nearby. It had an image of the MTT-resort on it.

Well if it wasn't anything more than that... "* What would you want me to write?" He reached for it and took the pen that William handed over the table. The man didn't have any specific preference either way, so he just wrote 'Good health and good luck in life - signed - the king'. It appeared to be satisfactory to the two, but seeing that he did sign it, soon a younger adult from a different table got to him with a post card of his own and asked him to sign it with 'Howdy Fellas'. He did that, but the second one's choice seemed strange. There must have been some context to it, since the others on the table he returned to, seemed to find it funny.

But before he would forget the more important things signing things and talking to tourists, he figured that the present was as good a time as ever to reassure himself of something pretty pressing. He dialed Sans' phone and gave him a call. "* Sans?"

"* yeah?"

"* The paperwork that arrived yesterday? The one of the purchase?"

"* he gave it to tori. it's stored away safely. no human or monster's gettin' their hands on it." What a relief.

"* Thank you, that is all that I wanted to know." He hung up, just as he heard the other skeleton's annoyed voice talk to Sans.

* * *

"COME ON! GET A MOVE ON!" A nervous skeleton was pacing up and down the stairs going from place to place with a bag, looking for a multitude of things to pack. "YOU ARE NOT GOING TO GO SWIMMING LIKE THIS!"

But Sans was not that skeleton. He was just lying across the sofa. And enjoyed some fries. "* who says I've gotta go swimming?"

"YOU HEARD UNDYNE! THERE WILL BE SO MANY HUMANS WATCHING AND YOU ARE NOT GOING TO SHOW UP AT A BEACH WITH A STUFFED HALF-JACKET AND SLIPPERS!NOW FETCH ME YOUR TRUNKS OR GO GET DRESSING YOURSELF!"

"* dressing? nah I prefer ketchup."

"YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN!"

"* if it's so important to you, why're you not wearing yours?"

"I AM. UNDER MY BATTLE BODY." Gee, he really was. At least under the extra layer of sports clothes. "NOW THEN, LET'S CHECK AGAIN TO SEE WHAT'S MISSING." He placed the bag on the table and started rummaging through it. "TOWELS, A WATERBOARD, BOXED SPAGHETTI IN CASE ANYONE GOES HUNGRY, MTT-BRAND SUNSCREEN..."

"* sunscreen? why have we got this in the underground?"

"IN CASE THE BARRIER IS LIFTED AND IT IS SUNNY OUTSIDE."

"* no, I mean how'd they even test it? can i try?" He got up, walked over to pop open the plastic bottle and held it to his nose-hole to check. "* it's just bishie cream with a different package."

Now this got him real riled up. "SANS, YOU UNCULTURED SWINE, IT MOST CERTAINLY IS NOT. YOU JUST LACK TASTE IN MODERN COSMETICS!"

He shrugged and headed back to the couch. "* oh, sorry then." It really was just bishie cream though.

"WHERE WAS I? MTT-BRAND SUNSCREEN, WATERPROOF WATCH - IN CASE I GO DIVING, A SHOVEL..."

"* a shovel?"

"A KNIGHT NEVER KNOWS IF THEY MIGHT NEED ONE."

"* Speaking of knights." Undyne let herself in and was presenting herself...still with her tank top and jeans on.

"* see, she ain't wearing any swim suit either."

The corners of Undyne's mouth rose pretty far, then she presented her teeth, but made a kinda silly face while doing so. "* You couldn't be further from the truth."

Papyrus suddenly shared her smile and ceased looking through what he's been packing to face Sans. "IN CASE OF WATERY ENCOUNTERS..."

Undyne clenched her fists in enthusiasm while going on and slowly moving closer to his brother. "* ...a proper knight of the royal guard..."

"...ALWAYS WEARS..."

"* ...their swimming togs..."

"...RIGHT UNDER THEIR CLOTHES!"  
"* ...right under their clothes!" They both joined together and said the last part in sync, before giving each other a high five. This time a high five that didn't end with his brother groaning in pain and heading to the sink to cool his hand. Those two sure were looking forward to this. "* You remembered?"

"OF COURSE! THE GREAT PAPYRUS WOULD NEVER FORGET ONE OF HIS CAPTAIN'S VALUABLE LESSONS."

"* Not yet, but..." Her face turned a bit more serious. "* I've been thinking. You remember how we said we might not need the royal guard or we'd relegate it to something like standing around like decoration or watering flowers? Screw that! You've seen what it's like up there. If I got a new smaller...less fight-ey royal guard - less as an actual guard but more like a spare-time group to do stuff, d'you still be in?"

"WHY ON EARTH WOULD I NOT?"

"* Sweet!", she cheered silently. "* Now I've gotta look for Alphys..." And as fast as she'd appeared, she was gone...until she wasn't. "* Actually, I forgot why I came here. Pap, you got my extra bag for when I stay here?"

Without hesitation, Papy put down what he was doing and went straight up the stairs. "ONE UNDYNE-SLEEPOVER-UTILITY-BAG, COMING RIGHT UP." Once he came back with a little turquoise fish-shaped bag and gave it to her, she left for good.

* * *

The area around the elevator in Hotland was crowded with people watching the last few tentacles of their hold friend get pressed together with a large metal pane and stuffed into the elevator, before movable water pool was slowly rolled back off the narrow platform and to the river. Undyne made her way past the captivated Monsters and humans, but when she stepped in front of the laboratory's sliding doors, none of them moved. She tried walking in front of them a second time, just to be sure, but they didn't open. After a few strong knocks on it, he heard a muffled voice from behind. "* No thanks, this isn't for visitors!"

"* It's me!" Within seconds, the doors opened, but they were shut again just as fast once she was inside.

"* Thank god you're here!" But by the time Undyne could look to Alphys, she had already disappeared in the bathroom, not to come back out until almost a minute later, and even then she rushed straight upstairs. "* I keep trying to figure if I forgot anything and there's always something! Quick, you can help!" She looked worn-out already and they hadn't even left yet.

"* All right, show me what you got." She humoured her for the moment and had a look. The table upstairs was cleared of all the things that usually lied spread all over it. And Alphys' version of 'cleared' meant that it was all just pushed off the table and laid bare on both sides of it. What took their place was an old, torn sports bag and four backpacks. She just tried rummaging the bag and one of the backpacks for the time being. And she wasn't surprised. It wasn't even that she wasn't surprised with what she found, she was. But she wasn't surprised that most of it seemed like crap of which there was no way they were going to use it. "* Pens and paper...books...shower gel...soap...vinegar...perfume...we're staying for an afternoon, not a week."

Alphys was letting her go through it, but she herself was just pacing in circles. "* But what if we have to pass on some secret message? What if someone trips over some nasty dirt and needs something strong to wash it off, what if I sweat so bad it smells...?"

"* And what if everyone else has stuff too and there's no space for all of yours?"

This didn't calm her down, she just covered her mouth in shock. She stopped running but was trembling in place. "* Oh no, you're right. I have to do it all over again." She already was overly nervous with all that was happening ever since they left the Underground - hell - everyone was out of it more and more. It was probably getting to her and she wasn't thinking quite straight either and she was just not noticing.

"* Tell you what, how about you don't start over packing all of this stuff and we only take the stuff we're really going to use." She took a few of the first things she found and threw them away demonstratively. "* No shampoo - eight pairs of sunglasses? Even if, we'd only need seven. There's no way Papyrus is going to miss out on that. They wouldn't fit on Asgore and his ex either. No books, even if there's nothing to be done, you've still got your phone. I've seen you do crazier stuff than kill time with it. And what is this?" What she pulled out was a metal box that was so big it almost filled an entire backpack.

"* Be careful with this!" The doctor quickly pulled it out of her hands. "* That's a tent."

"* For changing?"

"* A bit bigger than that."

"* Good, so we won't need it."

She was about to prepare to throw it away, when Alphys suddenly jumped towards her and pulled it out of her hand. "* Don't! What if you open it?"

She shrugged. "* So what, you got something smaller? Like one to change?" She had something very specific in mind. There weren't any real beaches with sand in the Underground. At least none that she had seen. All there was were bodies of water with areas of rock, moss or gravel that led out of them. All she had for an idea of what to expect came from watching anime or watching Alphys play these games where you don't play but just click through dialogue with cartoon characters and a few dialogue choices. And even of those, there weren't many. Oh god, they were so horrible and now that the barrier was gone, Alphys would probably go back to finding and playing more of those. All she wanted was one of these striped tents she had seen a photo of standing in rows. She wasn't half-way into describing what she meant before the doctor was already reaching into the bag on the far right and pulled out a little box that you could easily hold in one hand. "* Wha...why do you even have all of these?"

Alphys put on that face she always made when she was caught with something she was embarrassed about. "* Uh...I found one in the dump. You could take off one band around it, and it would fold itself into a whole tent. I liked the idea of it, so I tested out how small and big I could make a tent." It was only then that something dawned on Undyne. She looked at the little box and then pointed at the briefcase with her jaw slowly dropping. If this little box was a whole tent, wide and tall enough for monsters like her, then how big was the suitcase? No wonder Alphys didn't want to risk getting it to open in here. Alphys looked back at her, still with the same awkward smile. "* Yeah.." Looking back, she should have expected something like that. This was the passion she loved about her.


	17. With roasting sunlight above

A Doctor's Duty

Chapter 06

With roasting sunlight above

* * *

"They still make stories based on age-old mistaken tales of the - 'sunken' city of Atlantis - which of course never sunk, that would imply it was ever above water. But while they still linger in old collections of human folklore, they barely at all talk about the city's former inhabitants any more, probably as a result of those same inhabitants no longer being there. "

"Wait...that's..."

"Yes! The Tideriders! The name is of course misleading, they don't actually ride any tides. They ride on sharks if anything at all. They're also known as watermen or water nymphs. They live in and at water springs, rivers and most importantly, they're a predator from the southern sea that ranked very high on the food chain. Which is probably in part to thank for them - even when beaten, never making for much of a good food source since they don't leave behind an awful lot upon death. Their gills allow them to breathe under water, their sense of smell, which is still strongly tied to more primal impulses of theirs, still works in the water and the comparably strong musculature helps them swim faster and deeper than any intelligent humanoid of the surface could.

Their natural magic allows them to create solid spectral objects, which they commonly use to form all kinds of tools for hunting in the water. Any weapon you see a tiderider form is always actually based on the model of some piece of naval or otherwise sea-themed equipment. That's why their swords are curved like sabres, the tips of their spears are shaped like those of harpoons and why the shape of every blunt weapon they create has semblance to either the lower end of a boat or a clipped anchor.

One of their biggest weaknesses is drought in combination with extreme heat, which can incapacitate them for extended periods of time and in particularly strong cases even kill them. Their other weakness, at least in the first few years of the Underground being open is going to be the necessity to get used to smells that they weren't exposed to below the surface, which might trigger overt instinctive responses.

They have always hunted in groups, which is why in groups and especially under water, but also outside of these circumstances but then to a lesser degree, they tend to be very active and goal-oriented. When they see a task at hand, they become obsessive and focus only on the current target or objective. This part of them gets enhanced when exposed to substances generally emitted by their prey animals. Which can in some cases mean humans. This is why we always have to keep an eye open when there are new tideriders heading to the surface.

Phew, well this should explain everything about them."

"Wait, what about the warm food?"

"Uh, warm food? Alphys what are you talking about?"

"Don't they like warm food then?"

"No. No they don't. Who or what gave you that idea?"

"Uh...no-one...Okay then. Sorry."

* * *

The citizens had prepared water tanks for every step, at least another one for every room that the light-beige giant would squeeze his way through. It was time. Asgore had already contacted all the others, so all that was left for him and William was to get the equipment set up again to announce to the streets below that they would soon take their leave. Overtime, when talking to both citizens and the curious humans that came to visit them and witness it, they had learned that quite a few wanted to follow the convoy of trucks to the beach, and some of them wanted to take Monsters with them. As long as they accounted for who came along and each one had a phone on them, this wasn't much of a problem. He kept the announcement as plain and dry as he could and then turned back to the elderly couple that was watching Onion-San's slow journey with them. The Canine Unit had managed to convince them to take them along for the trip. His one-phone-rule was made an exception to with them, because he trusted the Dogi to keep an eye on their fellow dogs. And beyond that, to help keep track of everyone that followed them.

"* At last, there they are." Dogamy was drawing attention to the last two dogs left, the Lesser Dog and the Greater Dog of the Canine Unit.

The old lady was less shocked at what petting the former would do. "* My, this is a formidable neck you have. Does the other one do the same?"

Dogamy shook his head. "* No, Madam. If you would step back? Greater Dog! Do like you're in armour!" At once, what was at first just a little white dog, grew rapidly. Forelegs shifted to the side and became the wide arms mounted on broad shoulders, until an enormous hunk of a humanoid stood in front of the two. Except that it still had the same panting face of an excited little dog at it's top. But it's stature was soon a lot less intimidating, as it got back on all fours and whined for attention. To Asgore's relief, the two quickly calmed down from their shock when they noticed that all it needed were a few pats on the head for the dog to revert into it's normal dog shape. "* I'm sorry if it scared you."

The couple, the man had joined in to pet the two dogs, didn't seem to mind much any more. "* Nothing to apologize, just takes a little getting used to. As long as he doesn't do that on the way there..." With a little shake of a head, this issue too was resolved.

"PACKED AND READY!" The skeletons had arrived and the taller one contently patted his stuffed bag, while the short one was aiming a wide electronic device at one human after the other.

The growing group started moving ahead to watch their huge friend slowly squeeze through the last door frame between the Underground and the surface, where multiple water tanks were placed across the upper area of the cliff in case bringing him down there would prove a more daunting task than expected. Once Onion-San was far enough and settled his head in one of the tanks while placing his tentacles in the others, there was space for everyone to follow outside. The men from the water parks had finished setting up and securing a transportable structure that would serve as a partial lift for the giant, while several cranes would assist in easing down his weight together. Some of the men in uniforms were specifically just there to guide the Monster's tentacles to the right cranes, while others helped bring the unsure Monster's head to the makeshift 'lift'. "* Oh golly..." It was only then that Asgore looked straight down the cliff and got an idea of what the plan on transporting him was. Below and between the cranes stood a whole convoy of lorries closely together and in a straight line with water tanks for storage that were open to the top rather than the side. They were going to carry him the same way he was seated up here. The head in one of them, and the tentacles spread across the others to keep him watered. He didn't take his eyes off the slow spectacle, but he talked to one of the men that weren't doing much but walking from side to side. "* Why don't you just bring him down the path?"

"* It's wide enough up here and way down, but half-way it gets too narrow. Too big a risk that he falls off."

Once the tentacles were secured on the particularly high cranes and the head was finally shifting it's weight from the rocky safety into the set of nets and fixed carriage set up to bring him down there, it finally began. The cranes and the lift - very slowly - moved down. Slow enough to give time for Onion-San to pull back a tentacle and re-place it in the hanging comfort of the crane it was rested in, when he needed to. All these machines were made to be used individually or together to carry a single large creature, but this was like carrying multiple that were connected. But fortunately the humans sent to do this were professionals and had adapted the situation for that purpose. Soon, the head was deep enough to be secured by an extra crane and placed into one of the trucks. It was as though you could see the look of relief on the Chasmsprout's face all the way from up here. Soon, one tentacle after the other was low enough to retreat from what was carrying it and place itself in the surrounding water tanks.

When he finally drew one big breath and relaxed, Asgore realised that seeing him the way he currently was, was probably an odd sight indeed. Kneeling at the end of the cliff, supporting himself on his arms, and without his armour. All he wore, was a wide, custom-made set of jeans that ended just below the knees and an old pink shirt. To be sure, he kept the TEM BLOCK on him, only that it was now in his pocket. Generally not a very royal look, but he wanted to dress less formally. One of the coordinators came straight to him, when he received confirmation from one of the people below. "* So Mr. uh - Dreemurr. We'll have them waiting right at the outside road over there. They will wait for you to give them a go to move." He and the others didn't leave though but got right back to undoing the upper parts of the structure they had built to help transport Onion-San's head. When Asgore turned around, he saw that Toriel and the child had arrived. Much like how William wasn't going to do more than just take off the suit jacket, all this was on too short a notice to get swimwear that would fit the child. Then again, he didn't know how the waters were now, so it was probably better if Frisk did not go out for a swim just yet. Who knew what was in the waters.

"* Hey, is this the guy?" A human in a sports shirt came over to talk to Frisk and a few more in similarly casual clothes followed. "* Did you like - make that guy's business blow up?" He was moving comparably slowly and his pupils were dilated as if he were under the effect of some substance. "* Hey! Come over here!" He rushed over to pull a Monster - a blue bunny in a yellow shirt, red trousers and a suspender holding up the trousers, all of which were in strong, flashy tones, possibly to draw attention. "* Is this the guy?"

The rabbit looked back at him and the child with a beaming smile and a much clearer look in his eyes. "* Yes, it is him."

The rabbit leveled with Frisk to ask him whether he wanted another nicecream right now. Toriel didn't look like she approved, but she wouldn't stop him either. He pulled out his cell phone, but upon noticing that he was about to press a big button that read 'DBox', Sans slid to his side, tore the phone from his hand and fetched a few gold pieces of his own. "* no need, bucko. i gotcha covered."

"* So you're like the guy that freed 'em all, right?"

"* Yeah, I told you, it is him."

A young woman came over and hooked her arm onto that of the fellow that was repeating himself. "* I'm sorry.", she laughed. "* We loved being shown around the place." She turned to Asgore, because Toriel was taking a few steps back with Frisk after the confused man was staring at him for a little too long. "* Do you really live there?" She showed him a picture on her phone. He confirmed it, seeing as it depicted her and the others standing in front of his house. She stood next to Asgore to browse through her photos with him seeing them. They were just more pictures of their little group of four or just herself standing in different places, the backgrounds illustrating various locations from Snowdin to the bridges above New Home. But while going through them..."* What's the deal with these?" One halfway in showed a stone tablet. Or at least he knew that it was one from recognizing the wall it was on. It was in shatters.

The wall had a hole that looked like a small set of explosives was detonated at the centre of the tablet. From looking at the shape of it, he already knew who had done this. He just wondered when she found time for it. "* Alphys?" He heard her meep at his involuntarily raised voice. It appeared that the last two had arrived. He knew what was to be done. The poor girl, she was trembling just from having heard his voice like that. He felt bad about it, but this was one of the moments where he would have to be a leader and not just a friend. "* Is there something that you would want to tell me?" Undyne exchanged looks with her, before the king went on to ask the human woman: "* Could you show this to her? I suspect she might know 'what's the deal with that'."

"* I knew this was a bad idea!", the doctor blurted out with her hands still covering her face.

Undyne quickly pushed her way forward and stepped closer to him. "* This one's on me. She just did it 'cause I said so." Even she was a bit nervous.

This was all that was necessary no need to scold them for doing the right thing. Asgore broke his stance and scratched the back of his mane. "* It's all right. It was the right decision. It's good to know that I have friends who look out for me. I didn't even think of it. Next time however..." He stood straight once again to make this point stick. "* Tell me ahead of time when you want to take these kinds of measures." Their reaction was to his contentment. Firm, but understanding. With this issue out of the way, the last pair had arrived. He looked over to reassure himself that William was still with them, but he was standing right at his side, straight, silent and with his arms behind his back. He didn't want to draw unnecessary attention away from the Monsters with all the humans around satisfying their curiosity. "* It is time...", he called out. "* ...to set off." The young humans and the rabbit took that as their cue to rush down the cliff and the dogs followed them, dragging the nice elderly that were willing to offer to take them along with them. When the eight of them arrived at their own vehicle, Asgore soon realized that their normal setup in here was anything but stuffed, seeing as what it was like now that every two people had an extra bag packed, save for Alphys and Undyne, who had two. And the latter ones' were quite a bit bigger than everyone else's.

When the door was finally shut behind them, they drove up to the road they had seen from above. They even had to turn around and get to it from a different road. The convoy and line of cars behind it was just that long, but eventually they managed to stop behind the 'RV', as William called it, where Asgore left to follow the trail of waiting humans and monsters to the front, where he could ask Onion-San one more time whether he was all right and tell the two reading drivers that it was time. One place that he stopped on the way, was when one small and rather short car had someone on the drivers' seat that he recognized. "* You?" It was the young man who worked as a page at Miarim Inn. The only one that bothered to talk to them on their first day on the surface. But to his disappointment, he had some newfound nervousness when he wound down the window to greet him back.

"* Heey..."

"* I didn't expect you the type that takes spontaneous days off. Can you afford it in times like these?"

He was laughing, but not for a single moment did he take a hand off the steering wheel, even though they weren't even driving yet. "* Yeah, it's okay. I was sorta told to come here, so they let me go."

"* h0i!" Several Temmies looked out from the now winding down back window. "* tEms mek many muns on bich. haf much cool orring jus in bak!" So this was how it was. Well, he had to be thankful on behalf of the young man. He probably wouldn't have been allowed to just leave if it weren't for the mannerisms of these little ones doing some persuading.

He gave the young man a little smile and said: "* I'm happy for you. Enjoy the occasion."

"* Will do, sir." He answered before winding the window back down and getting ready to drive again. Which was probably Asgore's cue to do so as well, seeing as the growing sounds of running motors indicated that most of the vehicles were joining the lorries in getting ready to leave. He took one more breath of the fresh air of a countryside in the summer. He looked forward to waking up outside and up here every day. No matter how grim some outside circumstances seemed, life did look better after all. Cramped together in the minibus, William explained that most of the street lamps out on the roadways worked with weight switches, so there wasn't much to worry about, even if the queue of vehicles was as long as it was. The journey was a lot longer than one would think seeing as you could see the sea in the distance from the top of the cliff just outside of the castle already. Luckily, there were short stops for the lorries to refill on any water they lost.

Alphys had rummaged in her enormous bag to get out a little fan to turn on and aim at her and Undyne, as well as several bottles of water for Undyne to drink along the way. The journey had a lot of impressions to it that Asgore guessed he had to get used to. For one, there were the contrasts of the industrial districts they passed by with the fields of crops and grass reflecting the sunlight. At least this was something that captivated Papyrus more than otherwise. If it weren't for Sans to explicitly ask him to stop, he would have been looking outside with one of the back windows open the entire time, the wind blowing against everyone in the process. The sticky heat in here made it seem like the day was clearer and warmer than the previous few that followed that rain on the first one. William was sweating, and his clothing was worse for this than Asgore's shirt and trousers, but he wasn't covered in fur.

"* Parsey! I think this is it!" William was acting up and referring to a sign high above them that had that name written on it as a town name with an arrow to indicate that they were moving towards it. Finally. The king hoped that this meant their soon following arrival. The town was pretty busy in comparison to the other places he had seen - except for the inner city of course - so their travel through it was slowed down even more than it already was, but eventually, after taking a turn to get to an outer district away from the mall and blocky high buildings that you could see even without getting to them, everything came to a stop next to a large, open car park. After a while, one of the vehicles in front of them broke formation to use one of the many parking spaces. Which more and more followed up doing. When the last few in front of them were leaving, one of the drivers of the trucks came to their car to explain to them that this car park was reserved for the Monsters and Humans that would come here. It was only for the day, but Asgore knew to take such a gift thankfully. When he was done and heading back to the front, William flinched. "* Ugh, parking spaces. Another of the many things you're going to have to constantly pay attention to."

"* It will be alright. Let us just enjoy this day and cross that bridge when we get to it." They took one of the spaces in the corner, as that allowed for the Boss Monsters to be sure to be able to leave and safely enter later on. The people that followed the convoy, Monster and human alike, left their cars and followed. A few men had gone ahead to clear the area and mark an area that they could move on. Next came a part that they all knew was difficult. Slowly and surely, the trucks navigated on the emptied beach. They couldn't drive too far apart, because they were all holding tentacles or the head of the same creature, but they also had to turn around, so that once Onion-san had left for the sea, they wouldn't have to try to get off the beach driving backwards. The crowd that Asgore and the others were following just spread to mix with the human onlookers that had been there beforehand. It took a while, but eventually, they were in position. Asgore expected Onion-san to be nervous, but his eyes sparkled at the sight of the water, and he was already shifting head and tentacles to position himself a little closer to the back of the convoy and soon, they were finally back in one row, with the sea to their backs, driving backwards into the beach.

First, he only dipped one tentacle into the shallow water. And soon, one by one, he supported himself on the sand and brought his head to the back truck, until finally raising the entire centre of his amorphous body for all to see - not a giant humanoid, not a giant hidden main body, but only a huge onion with wide, rounded-off tendrils sprouting from below, 'walked' the last bit and made to disappear in the water with a happy but forceful splash that sprayed water all the way to the audience and causing small waves to wash up at the sides of the vehicles that brought him here. "* Wow! There's so much..." He guessed, that the overjoyed Monster was testing how far he could stretch himself. "* It's infinite! Thank you! Thank you so much! I'll be with you, y'hear? I just wanna go! Wee!" He didn't waste much time before he made to speed into the sea, the only hint of him a shrinking wave where they last saw him. He was probably going to knock himself out moving around below the sea. Asgore had worries from time to time, but then again, Chasmsprouts were extremely tenacious and much stronger than this one's demeanour would make people think. At least when it was necessary to make use of such strength.

As the audiences cheers slowly ceased, the workers made for their leave. Some of the tagalongs had left behind their belongings and went back to their vehicles to fetch them, while the rest went on, their group following them, to walk down the long wall of stone and concrete that set the border between the open sand and the busy town just above. Further along, there indeed were tents to change, as William explained, until he was interrupted. "* Actually, we won't need to use any of theirs."

Undyne couldn't resist throwing in a snide remark. "* Looks like your spleens pay off."

Alphys stopped digging out a little box and threw a look of annoyance back at her. "* With this, we don't have to worry about what's appropriate with using the human ones, because we don't even need to use them." They passed by a few small groups of Monsters and humans - talking - sometimes demonstrating to each other what is usually done in a place like this, and in turn Monsters - to Asgore's and everyone else's worry, showing them magic. They made sure to at least tell off one dragon to not have him singe anyone with his fire. Eventually, they arrived at the major part of the beach, where most visitors were. There was a net set up for a game of volleyball, which a horned devil was trying and failing to participate in as it would seem and people were sitting on lengthy chairs and on spread-out towels all across the area. Sometimes under large umbrellas, sometimes not. The group came to agree to settle down a little aside from the rest. When everyone had towels laid out like the humans and Monsters had, Alphys pulled out a little box and placed it on the ground with a certain distance from everyone, before undoing some locks and pressing some buttons at the side and backing away from it. The lid removed itself and the box' sides fell to the sides, to reveal a larger contraption which went on to extend and unfold itself upwards before spreading the planes of a tent in all directions, that was covered in a repeated, simplistic cartoon image of a human. "* Now, we don't have to use those others.", the doctor concluded. Everyone was looking at her for a while. "* ...after you..."

"I'LL GO FIRST THEN." Papyrus headed behind the curtain and zipped it shut. But within moments, he was already back, dressed in nothing but red trunks and a pair of shades. Seeing a walking human skeleton like that was a bizarre sight to behold. "I AM NOW ONE-HUNDRED PER CENT BEACH READY!"

"* Silly Papyrus...", Undyne laughed. "* You didn't need that. Neither did I. I can just change right here!" Everyone was about to hold her off in shock, but to their ease, pulling off her top revealed her swim suit to be under what else she was wearing. "* Now hand me that bottle! I want to have one more drink before I go for a swim!"

The doctor was startled. "* You want some more water before you go for a swim in the...water?...wait, salt water. Yeah here have one."

Undyne downed it in one go, and said: "* Real ocean, here I come!", before rushing off into the sea.

William calling after her to try and tell her that this wasn't an actual ocean didn't stop her in the slightest. "* It's just the southern sea. You wouldn't be able to...ugh, she doesn't care, does she?"

Asgore smiled while he made to take his turn. "* A fish doesn't care what waters they swim in, they just do." When he came back, he stood next to the still self-presenting skeleton and mimicked his pose. But Toriel wasn't looking. Of course she wasn't. Then again, why would he check if she did? He wasn't supposed to care. "* William, mind if you stay here and look after everyone? I haven't been on a beach up here for a long time. I would much like to enjoy it on my own." The human didn't seem to mind. He wasn't going to do much anyway, he was just seated here on one of Asgore's towels with a pair of sunglasses that Papyrus had given him and a book. It appeared there was not much need for Asgore to stay here at all times, so he could make for a more isolated part of the area to take in the scenery on his own.

* * *

"WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?" Slowly, Sans stepped out of the tent, wearing anything but his usual clothes for the first time in quite a while. "I CANNOT WAIT TO MINGLE WITH HUMAN EVERY DAY CITIZENS." They made to leave to head further into the beach.

"* i think we're gonna stand out a bit."

"OF COURSE WE WILL STAND OUT, SANS. MY PRESENCE ALONE WILL DRAW MORE THAN ENOUGH ATTENTION FOR BOTH OF US."

Sans wasn't so sure about that. "* i dunno, man. looks like we're far from the only monsters here. we're just a bit different..."

It was hard to look anywhere, where there wasn't something happening. Where there weren't either people swimming in the water, lying out in the sun, they were either playing games, or water skiing in the distance. Things almost took a turn for the bad when one of the dogs was chasing a Frisbee and accidentally bumped into a passing Orc. He didn't look like he was going to bother anyone until then, but assumed a menacing stance and looked like he was about to beat up on the little guy. "* Greater Dog! Do like you're in armour!" Before any fight could break out and darken the mood, the dog quickly stood up and grew to the massive build he could get when he wanted to, which quickly scared off the dark-skinned passerby and the day was saved by a panting creature with their tongue hanging out. Luckily, not many people had noticed what had happened until it was already over. Gee, and they had kids come here and build sandcastles? Humans sure were careless.

"* Hey! Sentinels!" A blue rabbit was waving them to come over. He was standing there with his little wagon and all in his uniform, while his new human friends were dressed for the occasion like the skeletons were. They were two men and a woman and all pretty young. "* How're you liking it here today? Everyone, these are the sentinels from Snowdin."

All the humans joined in to give them a weird handshake. "* Duude, you're like those guys from tv. You still got this bone thing?" The more chill guy of them had a bit longer hair and was wearing it with locks a bit like some of the darker Orcs did.

"BEHOLD, THE MAGIC ATTACKS OF A SKELETON! SANS! REMEMBER OUR DEFENSIVE TRAINING."

"* you still wanna do this? you sure ya got I in ya?"

"THERE'S NO NEED TO DOUBT ME, BROTHER. I AM ALWAYS ONE HUNDRED PER CENT THERE. NOW HELP ME SHOW THEM!" Sans raised his arms in defeat. It wasn't like he couldn't stop the bones if his brother missed them, so he did as told and took a distance, before summoning a few small bones. Papyrus summoned one roughly as big as his arm. Sans did like Papyrus made him from time to time and launched the bones in Papyrus' direction for him to strike at them like with a baseball bat. And as usual, he didn't miss one of 'em, just like he did every week. He insisted that they kept doing this in case of a human attack with a ranged weapon.

Nothing really surprising for him, but the humans loved it. "* You gotta join us, man. This is gonna be awesome."

"IN WHAT?" The girl was bringing a few poles, which she stuck into the sand at two places, placed three cups on each, drank out the one she was holding and put that on the last one. "OH. IS THIS YOUR WAY OF TARGET PRACTISE?"

"* looks a lot like it. first team to have theirs fall on the ground loses, right?" They agreed. "* you playing too?", he asked nice cream guy, who looked around, to check for anyone approaching, shrugged, and then moved to the skeletons' poles, while one of the humans went to fetch a Frisbee to throw back and forth. And of course Sans had the honor to have the first go. "* well, here goes." He tossed the disk and it flew...a few feet before dropping on the ground without really reaching the other side.

"OH COME ON. HOW MUCH LAZIER CAN YOU GET?"

He raised his hands and smiled off to the side. "* hey, it's a lot heavier than it looks."

"* Sorry, it's the rules. My turn." The girl threw...and threw one of them right off.

"OH NO!" His ghastly brother's jaw dropped. "HALF OUR DEFENSES ARE ALREADY GONE! JUST WAIT YOU!"

"* When they're falling off, you have to catch them."

"WAIT, WE CAN?"

"* Sure."

Papyrus picked up the disk with one hand, and raised the other one summoning bones to cover more area. "* pap, i don't think you're supposed to use magic."

"* OH..." The bones vanished. "I THOUGHT THE PICKING UP THING MEANT THERE WERE NO RULES - YOU KNOW, LIKE IN WAR. NEVERMIND! I WILL STRIKE OUR TARGET WITHOUT BONES! TAKE THIS!" He even stepped back to strike out more and threw it. He threw it real fast. It'd be impressive. If it didn't go way over it's target and hit nothing. "OH NO! HOLY GOOSHNOZZLE WE ARE DONE FOR." Yeah, his brother was like that. He would always get into these kinds of things one hundred per cent.

"* relax, we got this."

Even the bunny was chiming in. "* We just have to keep up that one cup and we should be fine."

When the Frisbee came back, with an encouragement from the more relaxed human, it struck the strick, but the bunny was fast enough to catch it and put it back up. "* Nothing lost just yet." He picked it up to throw it next. And for the first time, team Monster actually hit something. It only swiped one, but that one actually fell all the way down. "* You see? We're even now."

The game was just a back and forth, with Sans sometimes having to step in and help keep it going. Those last few days were pretty crazy, but once they'd all settle down with homes and all, Sans was sure his brother would be back to good old diligent Pap in no time. The game was evening out into a pretty stable routine. That was, until someone came storming out of the water and straight to them. "* Hyaaaaah!" With a lengthy scream, a very frantic looking Undyne raised one hand and sent a hail of spears straight for the human side of the game.

As fast as they could, the skeletons shot bones to block as many of them as they could, and nicecream guy summoned a green shining anti-magic orb. "* woah, woah, way to get out of control there."

"YES! WHAT HAS GOTTEN INTO YOU? YOU ARE SCARING THE HUMANS!"

Undyne was breathing heavily, and you could see her entire body move along with it. From how she was walking towards the now pretty alarmed human tourists, it looked like she was ready for battle...only slightly different. If he had only spent more time outside of the lab before things went haywire, maybe he could put his finger on what was going on. "* Scaring? I can tell target practice when I see it, and there's no reason to hold back on that. This is how you hit a target! Take this!"

"STOP!" A Gaster Blaster, a bit bigger than the ones Sans used, formed above them and fired a ray that blew away several of the incoming attacks at once, and then went on to move itself, along with the ray, until all spears that the captain had prepared, were gone and soon with it - so did the blaster. A few of the people around, that were staring at what happened, started to applaud. Papyrus addressed those first. "NYEH HEH...YES! T'WAS ALL BUT A SHOW!", but then he quickly approached Undyne before she could cause even more of a ruckus. "UNDYNE? UNDYNE, ARE YOU OKAY?"

A bit calmer than before, she pushed him aside. "* I never felt better, but you're never getting this done like that." She paced right to the poles and tipped over the last cup. And the moment she registered that she did, she - whether she was aware of that or not - calmed down, and that weird stare left her eyes. "* Finally..."

"ISN'T THIS A LITTLE BIT EXCESSIVE? IT WAS JUST A GAME."

"* Games are only training for..." she stopped, froze in place, looked back at the poles and the still afraid humans they were just playing with. "* Yeah...maybe I was getting carried away. Sorry you guys."

"* that was a little more than that. what's been going on?"

She didn't seem to register that there was anything really different about how she acted. She just shrugged. "* I dunno. I was swimming in the water...it was so different and I loved it. It was really intense, you guys have to try it. Actually, it got better and better. Then I saw you and what you were doing..."

Papyrus looked skeptical. "I'M NOT SO SURE. YOU BETTER GO BACK TO THE OTHERS AND RELAX..."

She took another deep breath. "* Woo, yeah, maybe you're right. Better see what Alphys' up to now. You coming?"

"* nah, we got some cheering up to do."

"NO THANKS TO YOU."

"* But I will." They were a bit surprised, but it really was Nicecream guy. "* I think I sold all I'll need to sell for the time being. The Temmies' juice on ice is draining the demand anyway. I want to find a reliable place for other occasions in case I come here again."

"* Whatever, let's go then." One more time before heading to the blue bunny's friends, Sans looked over to watch the now calm, but still confused friend of Papyrus' walk back along the shore.

* * *

She couldn't see Alphys anywhere, when she came back. William and Toriel were still reading and the kid was playing in the sand with some other kid. "* So...where'd Alphys go to?"

"* I'm still here!" She hadn't even come out yet.

"* What's the holdup?" Undyne had no patience and just pulled the curtain open, to find her shivering in place, covering her face. "* Well...this is awkward..." She soon stopped and saw what Undyne meant. Their swimwear matched each other in colour. Undyne's had the yellow of Alphys' scales and vice versa. "* C'mon, nobody's got anything on us." She dragged her outside, with the bunny still following. What she couldn't stop her from doing, was getting her phone, before letting herself be pulled onwards.

She was thinking about just taking her to the water, but then a few tourists ran away screaming just from there. There wasn't much time to get worked up over why, because a giant onion-shaped head emerged from under the water soon after the first swimmers were running away. "* It's so big, it's like it never ends.", he said. When Alphys came closer, she was sprayed with salt water as the bigger Monster raised a tentacle to meet her hands with his tip. "* Thank you so much. I'll never forget it, y'hear? Never." He was moving away again, but it looked like he was going to stay above water from here on in.

When all three of them were left here, Undyne quickly realised that they were always going to draw looks down here, so close to where Onion-san had just showed up. It was maybe better to go somewhere, where Alphys could relax. But at the same time, a place where she could keep an eye on all that was happening around here. When they came by one of the sets of stairs that led up the wall just above the beach, she decided to head up there. This place just above had all that they wanted. Even that salesman was delighted. "* This is perfect!" He opened up his wagon's umbrella and pointed at the big neon letters in front of them. "* I stay here and they come out in waves. At least I hope so." It was a cinema. She asked him if he could stand somewhere else, but he refused. "* No. I need to see if this pays off."

Well, whatever. It wasn't like he was going to do anything more than just stand around waiting for customers. They could sit by the edge of the flat road right above the beach and enjoy the view together. Sure, it wasn't very exciting, and nowhere near as exciting as swimming in the sea, but like this, they got to spend time together. And Undyne didn't mind relaxing a bit now either. Alphys was tapping around at her phone very intensely. Hard to believe how fast she was with foregoing the view and the place they were at to diddle around on her little machine again. "* So what're the humans thinking?"

"* I don't know, I didn't ask." When Undyne shuffled a bit closer, it became apparent she was just playing some shoot-em-up game. And she was so absent, because the figure she seemed to be steering was being come at from all directions. Good thing she could sit there and concentrate on that game and there was no-one distracting her - even for a second, what with how demanding this game looked. She shuffled yet closer to Alphys. Closer and closer until she was close enough, and gave her a little peck behind the cheek. And as if on command, her fingers froze up, the figure on the screen died in an explosion, and her eyes sprung wide open as her yellow skin had more and more crimson red mixed into it. It was a hilarious sight to behold and Undyne couldn't help but punch the pavement so hard, that pits of it broke off.

When she was done laughing, Alphys was still frozen in motion. When she came close enough to just wrap one arm around her and rest her head on her shoulder, she could hear her breathing a bit more calmly. "* When are you going to get used to this?" No answer. At least for a while, there was no answer and Undyne spent it looking down, seeing the dogs make sand sculptures, seeing Monsters and humans on the beach and in the water playing ball games and enjoying themselves in other ways. Some were even just sitting together, talking and enjoying drinks. Even Onion-san, now resting his head just outside the water was scaring off the human visitors less and less. In the distance, Papyrus was making weird, exaggerated gestures and was probably telling some story. On the other side, she could see Asgore in the distance. Alone, using magic to build and solidify a sandcastle that was his own size at this point.

Eventually, Alphys did talk after all. "* This isn't helping." With how she was starting to claw and Undyne's hand, it was obvious what she was referring to.

"* I don't care. If you're going to play games, we could have stayed at home too." They continued sitting there and watching over the place, until after a while, something changed. Some humans were getting into the sea and seemed to approach others, after which each person that was approached, left the water again. "* What's going on there?" Alphys even tried cleaning her glasses with her swimsuit, but couldn't really tell either. Undyne got up. "* This is it. You can hole yourself up all you want later. But now, we're getting in there." She was reluctant at first, but she wasn't unreasonable. Alphys followed up in standing up, so they could pace back down the stairs together.

When they got past the niche at Alphys' tent, they could gradually make out more and more. The people that first went to talk to people in the water, were really just talking. Those others stepping into the sea all in clothing were actually wearing diving suits with goggles, snorkels and everything, even an oxygen tank - possibly to stay under water later. Some of the people playing had stopped playing and got together with those that were just enjoying the scene and talked as did everyone else. And more and more of the people were concentrating around the other changing tents. They didn't go for the first people they came across, they wanted to get closer to what could have been something bad brewing. There were people in sports clothes with charts and lists - a lot of them empty, at least two of them had whistles hanging off their necks. If this was something that was gonna cause problems, she better ask someone not quite among the 'organizers' within the growing crowd of chatty people.

Just as Alphys was about to drift off, Undyne grabbed her and pulled her to where she wanted to go by the hand. There was a group of young men - pretty ripped-looking at that in trunks looking through bags while clearly standing next to one of the outlying tents, they looked open enough that she could ask them what was going on. "* So you guys?" She didn't have their attention until she talked to them, but once she did, they all stopped what they were doing to intently look at her. "* You know what's going on over there?"

The blonde one chuckled. "* Hey! Aren't you the girl from tv? Undyne?"

"* You're cute.", another one added. They seemed to be ignoring the lizard that was right next to her.

"* We heard all about you."

This perplexed her. "* Wait...you did?"

The blonde guy gestured to the zipped-shut tent they were all standing around, which judging by the pattern, didn't really belong to the others and might have been set up by them. "* Yeah, Krushe didn't even mention you until we brought you up. But then there was so much stuff, he wouldn't stop talking about you." Who was Krushe?

"* Oh please...", a tired, male voice came from behind the wall of cloth. "* You kept asking things over and over, don't go blaming me." And who was he?

The human that had turned around to face his concealed new friend started laughing. "* You coulda pretended not to know much, but you kept going."

"* So maybe she's a big deal in the Underground. Why? Is it really her?" This guy, talking about her and then hiding behind thin, easy-to-cut-through walls. She hadn't seen him once and already didn't like him. Then again, if he was in there, he was probably not so much hiding as changing into swimwear. That was probably what you get when you don't come wearing it from the start.

"* Eyepatch, fins, blue scales, yellow eye, looks like it."

"* Wow! Undyne? Captain Undyne? Is that you? Can you hear me?"

Her eyes narrowed, even though she knew he couldn't see that. "* Loud and clear, talker..."

"* Incredible. I'm honored to get to...are you here for the open water race?"

Wait, what? "* Open water race?"

The blonde human that had just been listening to the two of them before, turned back to face her. "* Yeah, they're setting up a contest. We're in this club - they usually don't do this for outsiders, but they offered to hold one for free when we showed up with you guys. Swimming fast in the water along the beach. You in, too?"

Well for one, she was relieved. She was prepared to expect anything at this point, but a lot of her bad suspicions were dispelled with this. She pulled the doctor a bit closer and threw her a questioning look. But after a second of quietly looking each other in the eyes, Alphys smiled and nodded. She was going to take part if this was happening, and Alphys would cheer her on. Her sinister grin, that had been gone for as long as she was worried about the commotion had come back. "* Sure. Why not. Sounds like just the kind of fun I'm in for."

The guy she couldn't see burst out with excitement. "* Woah, this is one of the best days of my life! First I meet you guys, then we come here to see what a human beach is like, and I get to beat Undyne - **the** \- Captain Undyne of the royal guard on top of all that! I almost feel bad about it." Beat her? Holy roe, the nerve of this guy.

She let go of Alphys and pushed past the other guy's broad shoulder to get a step closer to that thing he was hiding in. "* I'm sorry, did you say beat? I dunno about these suckers, but water's kind of my thing. I'm the strongest around, and you're..." She couldn't help but laugh for a moment. "* Sorry, but that's just a bit out of your league."

Finally, he was starting to pull open the zipper that stopped her from talking directly to this overconfident punk. He laughed as well. "* Trust me..." When the front wall was gone, what she saw step out - exceeding her in height where all these guys were the same size or smaller - she had to muster from the bottom up. "* ...I think I can manage." Toned, strong legs covered in blue fish scales were below a torso to match it - with his arms folded, and when her gaze arrived at the top, in front of a full body of long, crimson red hair, what she found smiling back at her were wide open yellow eyes and a set of jaws even bigger than her own.


	18. with cool water below

A Doctor's Duty

Chapter 07

with cool water below

* * *

"Well, then it seems we need to strike out a bit more on them. To understand how their behaviour is affected, you first need to get a better understanding of how instinct plays into the thought processes of sentient species. Humans tend to get the wrong idea, because the wrong idea is simpler and more easy to understand. It isn't that instincts are a kind of physical compulsion that you consciously perceive and can fight against. People have an image of the decision-making process that is based on selected data from when there is no decision to be made that is clearly relevant to a person's primal instincts. One way to make it more understandable are terms from electronics. Cognitive abilities - rational thought and any semblance of a personality that comes with it - are only something that is installed on top of everything else and acts as a 'slave' to the instincts. When there is nothing of import to the 'master' that is their biological imperative, then the 'slave is free to do what they like. That's why humans vastly think that free will is something given or even a good or a right. Whereas the truth is that they never had a free will to begin with. Instead, whenever all parties are involved, a person's capacity to rational thought is - among other things - merely a device to rationalize the decisions dictated by instinct.

This is very important when you want to understand people's decisions. Because the instinctive consciousness of a person's mind isn't always inactive, not all of their decisions make sense if you try to base your understanding of them solely on rational thought. When that is the case, you need to look for specific things. Cues and impressions that may trigger instinctive responses, such as certain smells, shapes and the like. The best way to do this is to remind yourself that to any life form, there are really only two objectives that everything comes down to. Metabolism and reproduction. Look for cues that appeal to those two goals and you will quickly find where the irregularity in a person's behaviour comes from. In all cases, look for opposite-sex fellows in case the instincts meddling with their choices pertain to reproduction. That or any offspring that may be at risk to some extent. In case of predators, look for the appearances, shapes, smells or even movement patterns of their natural prey animals. As for the latter, the more hungry they get, the less choosey they get with their prey.

And most importantly, judge a person by their actions, not their words. If instinct drove a person to betray you once, it will succeed at that again and again for as long as you give them any opportunity.

Then, you need to keep in mind that it doesn't simply force them to comply, it works in a way, in which by the very nature of how any sentient being's mind is cultivated, even the more intelligent ones aren't aware of it and will instead be convinced that they themselves made every decision they make, including the ones that they wouldn't if all that pertained to what they want was unadulterated rational thought.

There are ways to be less affected by all of this. Engaging in activities that require or reward self-discipline and precise execution of procedures down to detailed movements allow to learn to apply that same discipline onto your own mind and detect deviations from the necessary or rational courses of action. Which among other things means, that ironically, disciplined sportsmen, martial artists and the like tend to be less susceptible to instinctive behaviour. All of course depending on the species' cognitive abilities.

To bring this back to the tideriders, their hunting instincts, which are usually invoked when they smell prey, don't just turn them into a mindless, hunting beast that attacks whatever it comes across. Instead, it renders them obsessively fixed onto the task at hand. It still makes them ferocious, but it makes them competitive and ferociously focus on whatever they're doing or intend to do. This is an adaptation to hunting in groups and allows them to hunt with full dedication, even if within a hunting party, they have different roles to play. It also allows them to adapt to different methods and venues to seek and take down prey. Because of what they were capable of in groups, they have come to oftentimes hunt down, bring home and eat creatures that were a lot bigger than themselves."

* * *

The guy that was first talking about her, and then talking big about himself, was another one like her. Seeing him grin right at her like that - she didn't know what to think about it. Or how to feel about it. "* Sure out-swimming monkeys is easy, when you're a fish." One of the other guys took that as a provocation, but conceded it, when the striking fish smiled back at him. "* But what about when you're up against someone like you?"

She knew one thing she felt. She was pretty mad, that was for sure. "* Whatever. You've got nothing on me!" She once again raised her arm to summon a volley of spears that she left hanging in the air.

But that guy - still arms folded and all, moved nothing but his head to look up at what she could have rained down any time from many angles, just to show him what's what. "* Tsk..hm." Ne repeatedly nodded with half-open eyes and a grin on his wide mouth. "* I've certainly got nothing on you in quantity. " He took a step back and got Undyne all worked up from telling that he was assuming a battle stance. He spread out his arms in a specific pose that could only be premeditated, with none fully stretched out, his left arm seemed to be preparing to grab something where he expected it to show up, and his right arm seemed to wrap itself around something wide, preparing his hand to hold it. The glowing blue object he summoned was a large mobile harpoon and a gun to shoot it with along with a coil to hold on. His left hand grabbed the lever, probably to fire it when pulled, he was holding the weight of this visibly heavy stuff with his right. And he was aiming it right at her. "* How's that for quality?"

Showing this attitude to her - HER - and downplaying her displays like that. Pointing his own magic attacks at her with that kind of disrespect for what she could do to him. She knew this didn't really make sense to her, it was a bit much, but damn it, she was seething with rage. At least on the inside. On the outside, she was trying to keep it in. She couldn't stop her face from wrinkling as she stared in his eyes, but she managed to pull up the ends of her teeth-baring mouth to make it a malicious smile. "* That's not half bad. I'm looking forward to speeding past you more and more."

While unmaking his short-lived toy again, he even pretended to be surprised when she said that. "* Speeding past me? I spend a lot of time swimming, Babe." Babe?! "* I really think I got this one locked do..."

"* **Babe**?" She screamed. She didn't even notice she did until she saw him briefly flinch for the first time since they met. She even made her spears disappear. But it was too late, she had to commit to that now. "* That's it!", she screamed. "* Come on Alphys! We're signing me up!" She grabbed the cowering Doctor's hand from behind her by the wrist and dragged her back to the tables where they saw the likely organizers. One of them was sorting stuff that someone else had brought in cardboard boxes, and currently lining up a lot of armbands with numbers on them in a row. The other one was sitting at the table filling some kind of forms. When she got closer, she saw that they were all sorts of lists. She pushed herself past young humans, some with drinks, some just talking, but none of them sounded like they had any business standing in her way like that. One of them even swiped her right fin as he moved past her while holding some drunk friend of his up by the shoulder.

Once at the table, she slammed her free hand down to get the man's attention. "* Can I help you?"

"* I wanna sign up for the race."

"* Oh, I don't do the registrations." The distinct-looking organizer directed her to another one, one table further.

This other guy, a bit younger than his colleague, readily started asking for various personal details which he wrote down on a form which listed what he wrote about her along with the same of other people. She was about to give Alphys' lab instead of Papyrus' house for an address, because she forgot what that of the hotel was - if she was honest with herself, she probably never cared to find out, because she could always rely on Alphys for things like that. Which she was reminded of, because she got interrupted by Alphys giving the man the address that was probably the best bet. When they were done, he fetched one of the pairs of armbands that other organizer had laid out and gave it to her. Getting her signed up was easier than expected. Now just to wait for when they'd announce it to start.

Now to go back to see what the skeletons were up to. More importantly..."WHY WOULD YOU EVEN ASK?", Papyrus responded with surprise at her question. "OF COURSE I DID. BEHOLD!" He raised his hand to show her the same kind of armbands she had received. Sans wasn't wearing one though. "IT COULD NOT BE A DISPLAY OF MONSTERS' PRESENTABLE SIDE WITHOUT MY INCLUSION." He looked back at Sans, who was sitting on a deck chair slurping some cold drink. "IF ONLY SANS WAS AS DYNAMIC AS ME."

"* hey, someone's gotta cheer you on, right? besides, it's a race. so you gotta go pretty fast. you know that's not my thing, right?" Undyne noticed the lizard looking very sceptical. What the two of them noticed more than all of the rest though, was that Sans was alone.

"* Where are the humans from before?"

"* oh, ya just missed them. they left just about when we saw you coming."

She was up to speed with what he meant. She gave him a glare, but she dropped it. She had better to do than to bother with his antics. If she didn't know better, she would have asked Papyrus if he was going to be okay. But she already had er fingers burnt asking him about how he would swim, with how water could just pass right through between most of his body. The first time round it turned out, he just could swim. Somehow. She never got how that worked, but it did. In the river along the turf she had to watch and the lakes of Waterfall, he could keep himself over water and swim with no problems.

Alphys even tipped her shoulder to ask about that exact thing, at least from the situation, she guessed it was that, so she just shook her head and gestured her not to ask. Then again, she should have known that the doctor was too curious, not to ask and headed over to Sans to talk to him. Probably about that. She shrugged at anything else it could be, and instead used the opportunity to talk to Papyrus. With how all these people who look like they're good at this were staying around the tables this race was organized at, it was probably a better idea to stay nearby until things were set up. She could however use the opportunity to get Papyrus to introduce himself and her to some of the people here. He was a lot better with people - especially humans - than her.

* * *

"* So uh...is he going to be..." Even Sans just shook his head to the confused lizard.

"* no worries." Sans looked really sure about this. After a moment, she she looked at him a little more questioningly. He was confident about this, but she couldn't really tell why. So much could go wrong with what this meant. So many people in the open water, with nothing really separating from the sea, monsters and humans mixed in a long, moving crowd, oftentimes with no way of seeing them, and no way of telling if something might happen to one of them under water. She kept looking back with doubt. "* you look like ya don't trust the people here. healthy, but not necessary in this case." He made one short hand gesture that didn't seem to mean much and all Alphys could hear was the silent ripple of shifting sand. He then reached below the long plastic chair he was sitting on and pulled up some electronic device. A computer as the screen he showed her would reveal, but it consisted of nothing other than one panel, it had no keyboard and worked with a touchscreen like her phone. "* they're not looking, so check it out now."

When he showed her it's front side and pointed it to the crowd that Undyne and Papyrus were mingling with, what Alphys saw was a video feed of wherever it's back side was pointed at with an auto-locking cross-hair that - judging from how they changed simultaneously with the cross-hair switching targets, various numbers and other information on the person it was targeting. "* see?" He got a lock on one of the men in white shirts and shorts with whistles, and by tapping on the targeting, he seemed to be able to fix it on them to keep up their data. "* look right here." He pointed at two of the numbers in the lower right corner. The numbers, judging from the acronyms next to them, indicated the target's LOVE and EXP. And both were zero. "* harmless..." He unlocked it and re-locked it on another one of them. Still zero on both of them. "* ...harmless..." Then he repeated this a few times with another one. "* ...harmless...harmless...harmless...harmless - ya see? they're nothing to worry about, those others aren't killing anyone either."

This was too good to be true. Maybe it was just her, but she didn't have the feeling she could just relax and enjoy things like that. She had this feeling like anytime something bad could happen, and if she was honest with herself, that feeling had been there ever since they came up here for the first time and never fully let her go. So it couldn't be that easy, could it? What if..."* What if it's malfunctioning? I-I mean what if it shows everyone's LOVE and EXP as zero?"

And from how he reacted to that, he seemed to take that possibility into account - or the lack thereof. "* pretty sure it isn't. look." When he locked onto Undyne, it showed her with a whooping LOVE value of seven. She was shocked for a moment, but then again, she should have expected that. She knew how she had acquired that. She worked with a few of their SOULs after all. He then turned right around and zoomed in to get hold of a big, horned and lonely man in a pink shirt in the distance. She was scared all the more after the realized that that wasn't a glitch and it apparently was possible to get such a high value. It was so high, his EXP had a higher value than the digits allowed to display and it was just locked on nines. "* he's like more than five hundred years old and fought in the war. what did ya expect?" She guessed he was right. Thinking back, him parrying all these attacks flawlessly the way he did with that chieftain had to be more than just training after all. Like genuine experience of fighting to the death a lot of times.

"* I-I-I-I..." After she had herself pulled back together, she sighed. "* ...I guess you're right."

"* ya see?" He put the device back where it was and made that gesture again, probably to cover it in sand for when he wasn't using it. She would have asked if that was such a good idea, but he seemed to know what he was doing. "* i'm watching things more than it looks. now relax, unwind, get yourself a drink..."He raised his own now empty cup. "* ...it's all gonna be fine. don't tell me that face is what you're like with her too."

Of course he would go there. She preferred if he didn't though. "* So when are we going to make your Sans-mobile?" He was grinning and winking at her, but she could have sworn there was a subtle hint of annoyance in there. He leaned right back.

"* whenever there's time. we could get set up tomorrow."

"* Let's hope there is time." She turned around to check on the others. "* Anyways, you being the last scientist...the speed...a machine that detects bad guys...are you some sort of super hero?"

"* if i say i am and you could be my sidekick, will you stop asking these kinds of questions?"

She got the point. "* Y-y-yeah...okay."

* * *

Once the area further down the coast, opposite to the direction they had all come from, was cleared and divers were positioned in the water all along the stretch to keep an eye out for sharks or other dangers to alarm the swimmers, someone from that club finally came by and had all of them gather together and follow him. Undyne couldn't take much away from the people they met. A lot of the people who signed up were visitors who came by when word of this spontaneous event came around, and beyond swimming as a hobby and maybe what they did for work, they didn't have anything interesting to talk about. Also, during the wait, Papyrus kept trying to talk her out of participating for some reason. "* No, I'm fine, really."

He didn't seem so sure about this. "WE ALL BELIEVE YOU CAN WIN THIS. YOU DON'T NEED TO PROVE ANYTHING..."

"* Stop it already!"

His arms dropped in defeat. "WELL, I TRIED EVERYTHING. JUST TRY TO NOT HURT ANYONE."

A familiar voice from earlier drew near. "* Hurting someone? What's that all about?"

It was one of the swimmers that were arriving together with him. "* Hey, Babe. You really doing this?"

This time, she just went right head to head with him. "* Do. Not. Call. Me. Babe."

She was quickly pushed aside by her visibly nervous friend. "OH BOY. FIRST TWO ASGORES, NOW TWO UNDYNES." She saw how Krushe just switched back to formal terms within a moment's notice, as he stood straight and shook hands with Papyrus. "WERE YOU HER SPOUSE THE WHOLE TIME AS WELL?"

"* Papyrus...let's get away...", she mumbled through her teeth, which he either didn't hear, or didn't listen to.

Krushe, who was taken by surprise by the awkward conclusion, just tried to laugh it off. "* No, man. I'm just messing with her."

"WHAT A PLEASURE TO MESS WITH YOU TOO."

She really didn't want to spend the whole preparation like this. She pulled on Papyrus' arm. "* Please, let's go somewhere else..."

But she couldn't even finish talking when the next one from that little group of swimmers came closer. "* Wait, I remember you too. You're 'The Great Papyrus'"

To her surprise, this was the thing that surprised Papyrus as well. "WAIT...ME?"

This made the other young humans - previously scared of two large fish and a walking skeleton, to come closer as well. "* Yeah man...", the brown-haired human continued. "* ...you doing that bone thing is all over the internet now."

At once, he grabbed Undyne by both shoulders with glee. "DID YOU HEAR THIS? I AM INTERNET FAMOUS ALREADY!"

She on the other hand, still preferred not to stay like this. "* I still wanna get out of here."

But relieving help came at last, when the referee finally blew his whistle and asked everyone to form a half circle around him, so they could clearly listen to his instructions. It was simple enough, apparently more simple than what they usually did. They would each swim across the length of the beach all the way to the other side - from where he pointed a little further than where Onion-San was brought into the water. Because this particular race was open for laymen to sign up and with how spontaneous setting this up was, the stretch was much shorter than what they used to swim. There were divers along the entire length of the stretch to keep watch in case anything happens, Onion-San was even helping them. They were to swim all the way to the other side, where they would hand in one of the two bracelets they wore and swim back. They could even throw them if they felt safe to do so, but they wouldn't be counted unless they landed above land.

Of those who's numbers the guy waiting on the other side noted down, the first to walk through the home stretch that would be set up right between the poles where they were standing around would win. Most of the other safety instructions were self-understanding to her, but she guessed the part where he said: "* Oh - and for you guys - no magic attacks. This is a race, not a battle. I already heard about that.", had to be added for her and the other monster participants. There weren't even as many of those as she was afraid there would be. There was her, Papyrus, Krushe, a horned devil from Hotland, the green lizard from the Snowdin Library and one of the Dogi. There were so many she could think of who would have loved this, but they either didn't bother to come or had no ride. Well, sooner or later they would. She was sure of it.

One of the men in white shirts guided them quite another stretch further down the beach, where he went to one swimmer after the other to arrange them in a straight line, so as to not be in each other's way, at least not at the very start. And of course, what else did she expect, he saw two fish and positioned them right next to each other. "* Good luck.", the overconfident waterman said with narrowing pupils before turning back to keep watch of the referee walking up and down to examine each swimmer one more time before - once out of the way of the last one, started announcing that it was to start at his signal. She braced herself to sprint those few steps into the water when the time came. And kept close watch of the water and the sand ahead. When the countdown was done and a shrill tone came from the starter's whistle, she pushed herself off to gain momentum and jump into the water as soon as it was deep enough. She focused entirely on the motions and on making them faster and more efficient. She didn't even bother to look to her right, but she could feel from the currents that, while they had both lost Papyrus within a matter of seconds, revealed him to be right next to her. She couldn't see anyone whenever she looked ahead, but to her relief, she soon felt that Krushe was slowing down, ever so slightly. It was working. She was beating him after all. She could feel the thrill of swimming in the water again. Of pushing things to the max and showing the world her force, whether it wished to see it or not.

But before they were even halfway across the stretch, the water movements that came from him approached her again, he was gaining on her, but while catching up and then even overtaking her, he somehow found time to slap her leg, even if only meekly and for a moment. Her anger surged through all of her body, she was more certain that she would push through and beat him than before. She swam and swam and pushed and pushed, but somehow, she couldn't keep up with him, she saw him rush right past her. She couldn't get ahead, not nearly as fast as before. Something was pulling on her leg. In fact it was pulling her down and she soon couldn't even keep herself over water any more. She only really consciously registered it when she was under water all the way to her head.

On a similarly coloured shackle around her right calf hung a blue shining magic-formed anchor. Drat! This cheating piece of scum had slowed her down on purpose! One of the humans in diving suits were even on the move to come to her help, but she quickly waved them away. They probably thought she was in danger or something, but it was different with her than others. Others had to hold their breath, she could breathe under water just fine. Undoing the chains that were dragging her deeper and deeper wasn't hard either. Into her hand she summoned a green-glowing anti-magic spear. Touching the shackle quickly undid the anchor and allowed her to swim back up - no - not completely swim back up, but continue like this. Catch up with him and surprise him from below. The humans and other slowpokes were already catching up. She better get a move on. But it wouldn't matter. Now this guy really got on her bad side. Swimming from here was like gliding through air at first, then it felt like pushing for mach speeds like a piloted mech in overdrive.

It was like the first time swimming all over again. She was forgetting about more and more that was happening around her. Winning this race. Beating Krushe. That was all that mattered. And that was all that she would devote herself to. The sleazy worm even looked out enough to dodge her spear when he rushed past her from having reached the other side. When it was her time, she didn't even bother to surface. She just swam right forward below the water until there wasn't much space between the sand and the surface, tore her right armband off while still straddling, launched it out of the water, and threw a spear after it to catch it and carry it further on-land before she released it. She planned each of these moves ahead of time, made them all at once and dashed right back into the cold currents, where she could see a distant crowd of people gradually arrive as well. She sped past them so fast, it was like they were static. Then after rushing head-on after him, she finally saw him again. There he was, swimming curves, even facing back at her with his hands behind her head, only swimming with his legs. Smiling. That smile would soon go away with her catching up like that. As she came closer, she knew she would overtake him within a few seconds. Except that this coward soon realised it and got out of his comfortable stance.

As if with one single, extremely strong impulse, and a simultaneous move with arms, hands, even the hidden, folding fins on his chest, he accelerated from zero to one hundred and with one more swing of the direction he was moving in, he was back on the same track as her, but faster than she had seen him before...faster than she herself had ever been before. It all went so fast, you could see him draw a line of bubbles through the water after him with sheer force. Could he do this the whole time? No. She had to try and catch up. Somehow. But it wouldn't work. She was already giving it her all. She was so much faster than any of these people, yet this guy could stand on the sandy seafloor with only a few inches between the top of his head and the surface of the water, waiting for her despite having 'waited' for her before. When she finally sped up one more time to try and launch herself onto an even distance to the goal with him, he did this instant-rushing thing again and just jumped out of the water in one go. By the time she had used her momentum to jump out as well and landed hands-first on the sand, the finishing line was already torn, and he was sitting behind it on the ground with his legs folded and yawning at her sight. "* What took you so long, I've been waiting for ages."

Ha ha, very funny. She could see he had only left the water. The fins that ran along his torso were still making one last wave-shaped motion down their lengths before closing again and making it look like they were never there. But even in spite of that. She was still breathing heavily from having shown all that she had from start to finish, while he was already calm for the most part. "* Wha...wha...what are you?" The referee was slowly stumbling backwards, in shock over what he had seen. "* Is there some kinda magic doping too?"

Krushe just laughed with his eyes closed, before opening them and getting back up. "* There is, but that's not it. It's just how we are." Undyne's eyes twitched when she saw him come closer and closer, and eventually offered a hand to help her up. "* Here, get up."

In his dreams. She slapped it away, and got up on her own. "* Don't touch me, cheater." She didn't want to hear any of his excuses and went straight to the confused human, pointing her finger at the waterman. "* This guy cheated! He put an anchor on me!"

She had him so far that he was standing against a wall with his hands raised. "* Like...in...a price anchor? How much did he pay you?"

"* Ugh - no! An anchor! A real anchor!"

"* Where did he get an anchor?"

She couldn't believe what she was hearing. What was this about 'no magic attacks' just before then. "* No! Of course I mean an anchor out of magic." When she looked back, Krushe was even standing there, with a new summoned anchor to point at.

"* Wha...oh god are you hurt?" Finally, at least a bit of reason from the human. He was looking all over her, but she pushed him away when he was about to fidget at her eyepatch.

"* No, no he didn't attack me, per se, he just..." She moaned in annoyance. Of course. No magic attacks didn't have to mean no magic at all. And they probably didn't get the difference between using your body if it was made of magic, and using magic to cheat. Such sleazy scum, using loopholes of on-the-fly rules like that. She hated him more and more with every single interaction. No, he wasn't going to get off the hook that easily. "* And you! This whole smug I'm-better-than-you thing you've got going on! I can't stand it!"

"* Well your technique is a bit..."

"* I WAS NOT DONE YET!"

"* Oh geez." He was still doing it. He had his hands up and inched back when she pressed her finger on his chest, but she could still see it on his face. And hear it in his voice.

She was about to pull the rest of her hair out, but then he'd probably boast about having more hair than her, too. When she finally got hold of herself, she came to the conclusion that this guy wouldn't stop whatever she did. With an angry grunt, she tore off her second armband and threw it into the sand. "* Take your damn number!" These were her last words before she stormed off all the way back up the beach. By foot, and in more of a march than a walk. This whole deal wasn't just infuriating. It was humiliating. And it was in front of all the people that could see it. She was lucky enough that the beach was curved in a way that most couldn't see all the way to where it ended, but that didn't change that it happened. She was in her element and she was beaten anyway.

"* So? Did you beat him?" Even Alphys wasn't enough of a reason to stop. She just turned to the left and didn't stop until she could sit down with her back to the wall and her face hidden behind her knees. The patient little doctor still came lumbering after her in her blue one-piece and knelt down next to her. "* I'll take that as a no...Undyne?"

"* I don't wanna talk about it.", she whispered in a tone that should have sent a clear message. Even to her. It didn't send Alphys away though, she sat next to her on the wall, all quiet, without a word. She tried to sound calm, but on the inside, she boiling. She didn't even know why it bothered her so much. She had set her own house on fire by trying to cook - twice. She spent years of getting beaten with ease before knocking down the one person she attacked even once, she found herself going after innocents and getting showed up for her lack of consideration so many times. And then she was beaten by a little kid. She got through all of that all right. What was different? Was it the surface? Did it somehow make her feel like things were more important? Was it this day? Did simply seeing and feeling new things change her like that? The swingy-wavey patterns in the sand under water, the way the sunlight shun through the constantly moving surface of the sea, making it look like a wobbling net cast over everything below. This blood-boiling feeling that the smell of the sea gave to her.

No. That wasn't what was different. It was him. He was what bothered her so much. Anyone she fought or competed with about anything, she always remembered them showing humility, even if they beat her. But this one thought he was so much better, with his big, yellow eyes, big teeth, hair that reached from one side to the other and still went past his shoulders, she desired to beat him so badly and anticipated doing so. It went so fast, it was over before she thought it'd begin. The same could be said about her sitting here. More and more of the people that were previously just watching came here to be closer to the host of others that were only just reaching the goal ever so slowly. Frisk came closer to her for a moment, but stopped half-way and backed off again without Undyne even noticeably registering him - as if he knew better than to try to talk to her.

Earlier than she wanted this, a chattering herd of humans came along, using crude descriptions or onomatopoeia to convey their experiences, making snide quips at each other, and some of them even pointing at her when they saw her. She knew they were probably praising her for being so much faster than them, but it felt like being mocked anyway. "HEY! UNDYNE!" Oh no, he really was coming here. There was the man of the hour, coming towards her of all the ways by piggy-back riding on Papyrus. Alphys made very distressed hand-waving gestures urging him not to, but he either didn't pick up on it or just ignored it. "UNDYNE! YOU NEVER TOLD ME HOW COOL OTHER UNDYNE IS! WHY DID I NEVER MEET HIM? OR KNOW ABOUT HIM?"

With two pats on an open spot on Papyrus' shoulder, Krushe was dropped and had the nerve to come up to her after all that. "* Come on Babe, are you still mad about it? There was no prize or anything, it was just a game."

Alphys didn't like what she heard, and neither did Undyne. "* I'm not your babe." She silently mumbled. When this guy came closer to ask what she said, she stood up in one motion and screamed right in his face. "* I AM NOT YOUR BABE!" She got him to step back, but she wasn't going to stop if he had the guts to come up to her like that after all that happened. She had to keep pursuing. "* I am not your friend, your 'babe', your anything. You are worthless scum and a cheater. So stop talking down to me like that, stop befriending my friends..." she punched Papyrus on his upper arm to get him to stop leaning on the blue shoulder next to him. "* ...stop having anything to do with me at all!"

For once, he stopped smiling, even looked a bit concerned. Just this once. "* Is all this still about the race? Look, if any of these guys swam the way you did..."

"* I don't want to hear it! If you were so sure about yourself, you wouldn't have tried to pin me down! But you did!"

Krushe, before in a mockery of an intimidated stance, stopped moving back, stood his ground, even when she momentarily tried to push him back and folded his arms again. "* You saying you could beat me - no shackles - no nothing?"

"* I could take on a wannabe like you a thousand times up and down any stretch!"

"* You want a rematch?"

She didn't like how his big, yellow eyes weren't looking all that afraid, but she refused to take the bluff. "* You betcha I want a rematch!"

"* Same time next week?"

He wasn't just not afraid, he was smiling. But whatever he was on about, she couldn't back down now. "* Same time next week!"

At once, he relaxed, took one step away from her and nodded with a wink. "* All right, same time next week - it's a date."

The nerve! This had to stop now. She closed in on him again and went back to shouting. "* You're doing this thing again! Stop it! Just stop coming on to me like that! What makes you so sure I don't already have a person in my life?" Her hands were itching to just punch him, but she wasn't quite sure deep down how that would go for her.

He on the other hand, wasn't fazed. Well that's not quite true, he was, but not in the way she hoped. He pointed at Papyrus. "* Who? The skeleton?"

The skeleton, shaken by the prospect raised, effeminately placed an open hand on his rib cage and looked off to the side. "GRACIOUS, UNDYNE...I DIDN'T KNOW..."

This was something to go through the roof about. Why would it just not stop? "* No! Not the skeleton!" With wide, hacking movements of her arms, she pointed both of them at Alphys. "* Her!"

Oh no. She thought she had broken his shtick. For a moment, he was confused when he thought she was talking about Papyrus, and for another moment, he was pretty bewildered when he saw who she was pointing at. But in the next, as soon as he understood, his stance straightened again, he stood firmly on both legs and shrugged. "* Hey, if your - love - for her is that real..." He pointed at himself with his thumb without conceding the least bit of fortitude. "* ...then I'm sure one single date with this guy's not gonna change a thing. That's why we make it a bit more exciting. Next time's not just a game. It's a bet. You win - I won't be on your radar again. I win - we go to one of the places up here - just the two of us. And I'm buying."

He couldn't be...yes he was. His eyes were narrowed and he was showing off his teeth again. He was serious about this. He was even offering his hand to make it official. The thought of what she'd have to go through if she lost. But what if ducking her head now meant that he would be on her back over and over? There was too much at stake. She had to go through with it. "* Right! It's on, talker."

With one handshake, the deal was sealed. "* Nice! See you then. Hey guys, wait up!" With one more wink and a tooth-bearing grin, he backed off and ran away with his hair dancing with his sudden rush forwards. It was only when he turned around to rush after his new friends, that it started to dawn on her, what she had done. She had seen him speed around, the moment he started getting serious. And just summoning and keeping up a large, heavy magical object while still swimming as fast as she did without that extra burden was a give-away as well. She was good with fighting on land, but between the two of them, swimming really was his strength. She would need some miracle to get out of this. She couldn't just chicken out, then she would lose face even more than she already did.

She sighed and slowly came back to sit next to Alphys, who went on to shyly tip on her shoulder to ask. "* U-uh y-y-you're not really going on a d-d-date with him, are you?"

No. "* Oh Alphys..." She couldn't let her think what she was thinking. She turned over to her and gave her a hug. "* I'll never stop loving you."


	19. and with friends at her side

.

A Doctor's Duty

Chapter 08

and with friends at her side.

* * *

When the people from the local swimming club packed their belongings back together, peace returned to the beach. Well, as far as there ever was peace with all the people talking and drinking, swashing around in the water, playing games. More and more, humans taught Monsters the games they played up here, and in turn, they warmed up to little magic tricks that Monsters had to offer. Some even would trust Onion-San to raise them up, so they could jump back into the water from higher up. Whatever bothered Undyne so much after she outdid almost everyone at the race was soon either resolved or ignored, as Papyrus got her to try this 'volleyball' as well. Which led to a few predictable episodes of her completely overdoing it with how strong she struck the ball. Asgore himself came back to the little camp they had set up, since all his attempts at making an impressive sandcastle for the visitors to pass by on the way back - by way of impulse or any other - led to the same result, to listen to William tell him about the many different sports the humans had developed. Toriel had left for further inward, where it seemed that Frisk got to meet a few other human children.

Before anyone knew, the hours had passed and they soon had to get to gathering everyone again, if they wanted to be on their way back before the sun would go down. The king made first for the couple that tended to the dogs, since they were the ones that volunteered to help with that and had the lists they needed to make sure everyone was there before they left. Before long, the skeletons, Alphys and Undyne came up to them as well, and went on to run errands, hasting from place to place to get everyone to stop what they were doing and come along. Sure, some looked discontented at how their time here was coming at an end, but sooner or later, they all understood that there was no way around it. They had comfort in knowing that this surely wasn't the last opportunity for them to enjoy this. Everyone was grouped together with the respective humans they had come here with, and it was made sure that each group had at least one driver that wasn't intoxicated. Step by step, the Dogi crossed out one group after the other, until after a little search further down the corner, the last group was complete and they would slowly make their ways back to the vehicles. The eight of them stayed behind for a while, to make sure that everyone was accounted for.

This was when it appeared that things wouldn't end as quietly as hoped. The previously calming sea was gaining movement and soon, with a sudden splash, a distressed tentacle monster surfaced. "* Get away! Something's coming!" His panic was growing. "* It's real big!" What was so big, that a Chasmsprout would be as scared as this?

From sudden shifts in how the waves moved, Asgore could tell that something was indeed speeding their way, until with violent rushes of water being launched aside to make way, a giant lizard creature jumped out of the water and onto the beach next to them in one leap, whirling up sand wherever it came to stand. Turquoise scales covered its entire skin and sharp, black spines grew out of its back. A powerful tail lashed at the empty space behind it and at its forefront, the lengthy jaws of its dragon-like mouth opened themselves wide for a shattering and slobbery roar. "* A leviathan...but how?", William then stuttered. "* It can't be!" Him declaring it impossible didn't stop the creature though, which had clearly registered their presence and was heading towards them on all fours. He knew that without a doubt, battle with this creature was unavoidable. He could only hope the child would get to safety in time. With a distinct step forward to draw the beast's attention, and still in summerly attire, Asgore stretched out one arm to summon his trident. He wouldn't be the Monster King, if he couldn't take out one measly dragon. With a few swings of his trident, he thrust up spikes of Sand, but he couldn't achieve much more than startle it with the sudden impacts.

No matter, he would use fire to halt it. If it came from the water, searing flames would surely dry it out. Even Toriel hurried to his side, stretching out her arms with him and preparing a huge wave of fireballs arranged around the now confused creature. There was no way it could go, with how it was surrounded by fire from all directions. But as soon as his fireballs and those of Toriel came close enough to almost collide, small sparks of light flickered between each of them, followed by the same ones flashing up between him and the former Queen, before an overwhelming force canceled their magic attacks and violently threw the two of them apart, leaving them both fallen onto their backs. Their magic, when close enough to that of one another, must have somehow rebound.

"FEAR NOT" It appeared the taller skeleton now stood in the way that Asgore and Toriel had inadvertently cleared for the beast to close in on the others. "I HAVE LONG WAITED TO SHOW IT." He could have sworn, he saw Undyne shake her head silently mouth a 'no'. A small bone manifested in Papyrus' raised hand. "BEHOLD MY SPECIAL ATTACK! THE BONE-ERANG!" When he threw it in an unnecessarily dramatic way, it shot at the approaching lizard, striking its right shoulder with a force strong enough to halt and anger it, only that instead of disappearing, it ricocheted off its skin, turned back around to strike the side of its jaw, then ricocheted again, struck its side and so on and so on. Whatever it was that the skeleton was doing, it indeed seemed to distract it. Only that it did only that. It distracted it, but it didn't look like it was accomplishing much in regards to damaging or forcing it back. He was about to get up and prepare another wave of fire, but Papyrus even gestured him not to. "NO NEED. THIS IS ONLY THE FIRST PART!" He stretched out his hands to catch his 'bone-erang'. "NOW COMES MY REAL SPECIAL ATTACK!" Within a moment's notice, it transformed into an enormous, lengthy skull that floated in the air where the little bone had been, but it had a size that required Papyrus to stretch his arms out all the way, just to get hold of its sides.

As the creature neared, light gathered in the skull's eyes that already had orange, shining irises, as well as its opening mouth. The skeleton clung onto the large skull. "UH OH..." While he cried out in fear of his own, Papyrus' weapon's lower jaws parted like a set of mandibles and it fired an immensely loud and visibly powerful beam, but moved around uncontrollably while it did so. Undyne and Alphys quickly came to his aid to help hold the constantly firing device with a little more direction and to cover the leviathan, now finally screaming in agony all over with the ray of Papyrus' surprisingly powerful magic attack covering every part of its skin at some point. This was his time. He couldn't risk his magic backfiring again like it did with Toriel, but he could prepare smaller waves of fireballs to help burn the leviathan's skin. Maybe after sufficient work on the scales, sand spikes would work to injure it.

This thing was insanely tough though. It recoiled in pain, but it neither seemed to die, nor show any major intent to leave. Eventually, the beam from Papyrus' weapon grew weaker, stopped, and vanished, followed by a loud sigh from the probably exhausted skeleton. "PHEW. SANS! WHERE ARE YOU?" In this entire time, Sans had not moved an inch, still lying on his long chair, watching the entire spectacle from afar and giving his brother the thumbs up. And completely relaxed at that. "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?" Asgore had time to think about the implications of this later. Now was the moment to try piercing it again. But even now, the sand was just not solid enough to form something that would properly injure it. All it did was draw attention to him. He dodged the tail swipe that followed, as well as the subsequent attempt to grab him with its mouth, but this couldn't go on like this forever. This wasn't a clumsy savage, but a being that wielded its teeth with the routine you could expect from someone who's weapons were part of their body and with them for all of their life.

* * *

She couldn't let Asgore stay in trouble like this. All the less now that Papyrus was done with his crazy attack. Whatever it was, that thing's skin - now completely covered in burns and wounds - was probably not as solid as it was before. With one swipe, she fired a hail of arrows down from the giant lizard's side to bury their heads in its shoulder, which did make it stop attacking Asgore to shrilly express its pain again. Great, so her attacks would work now. That monster's scales, now charred and with smoke coming up from them, in some places even burned off, were vulnerable to her spears. But with the next spear she rose with her hand, she saw it have a yellow ring form in front of it. A look to her side made it clear that Alphys was doing something. When she hurled it, little yellow lightnings coursed around the arrow and would flash up a bit before vanishing when it pierced the creature's foreleg. But somehow at the same time, Alphys was also firing small yellow lightnings of her own. When she looked back though, she saw that it was Frisk. His hands, formed to make pistols, were glowing yellow, and each time he motioned the recoil of a pistol with one if his hands, they fired another of these small bolts in the leviathan's direction, not really impacting, but bothering it anyway.

All of their efforts were finally enough to get it to turn around for good, but they soon came to regret that, when they all noticed how fast it could move in their direction. Before anyone knew what to do, it had come in range to - with another hiss-filled scream, raise its foreleg to strike straight at Undyne. But before the claws that were gunning for her, could reach her, something big pierced through them from behind, coating itself in the leviathan's dark-red blood. The enormous, blue glowing blade of a familiar harpoon had dug its way through and fixed itself onto the claw, pulling it back. "* Don't worry, I gotch - woah! Help!" Krushe had somehow come up from behind the leviathan to help by halting its movements, but after another scream from the pain of getting its claw impaled, the giant lizard jumped to the side and made for the water, dragging the panicked fish after it. She was going to shout after him to just let go, but Undyne quickly put together that that wasn't as good an idea.

If they just left this thing to itself now, it might come back later, when people that couldn't defend themselves as good as they could would be there. Ignoring Alphys' shouts for her to wait, she sped off to jump back into the water. They were either going to finish this thing or injure it so hard, it wasn't going to come back for a long time. If at all. It took a few more seconds to get used to breathing with her gills again, as well as swimming after the strongly irregular currents she was chasing after. Ahead of her, a screaming Krushe was flailing around, still hanging onto his harpoon, the front part of which was lodged in the leviathan's hand. "* Hey!Coalhide!" Luckily, her voice was loud enough, even in the water, for it to stop and turn around to face her, before they were too far out in the sea. Who knew whether there were more of this thing wherever it came from. Maybe engaging it like that wasn't such a good idea though. Under tremors from sheer tension of its jaw muscles, it opened its mouth and snapped at her. Only a second after rushing backwards in panic, did she realise she had swum back with her chest fins, the way Krushe did in the race before. In fact, escaping death like this...So fast, so imminent. She had never felt a rush like this one.

Instantly after escaping that first attack, more followed with its free hand, which she now managed to dodge with quick bursts backwards and to the sides - or even downwards. When it raised its other claw, she saw her chance. The cord of Krushe's harpoon was stretched upwards, and he was swimming steadily behind it from above. Undyne swam right under its foreleg, as it failed to grab her there, when her claw was again pulled back, giving her an opening to summon a set of spears both on range and in her own hands, to plunge into a probably weak point under its foreleg. When she did, it flinched and swam back, but even under water, the scream was so loud she had to swim away to get some time to collect herself. When she turned back around, she saw why she had the time to do that. The leviathan had finally turned around to start trying to get hold of the waterman it had brought here, he was dodging it as fast as Undyne expected, but she could tell his lack of combat experience. He simply made up for it with speed. He had let go of his harpoon, but he still maintained it, the larger component he used to carry it was simply sinking onto the ground. From the small wounds at its side, it was bleeding into the surrounding water already, and soon, there would be much more of this confusing odor. With one more rallying shout, she summoned a vast and wide wall of spears to hurl down at the creature's back. There were so many of them this time, there was no way they would all miss.

When he saw what was happening, the waterman started adjusting his swift motions to be more sideways, drawing his crimson hair tilting towards each move as he did it. When she sent her attack off, it covered both sides of the creature's back, a few even burying themselves in the more solid looking spines. Judging from its reaction, they were either really wearing it down or this attack hit harder than anything before. It flailed around quite a bit, requiring Undyne to dash downwards not to get hit by the tail. When it came to again, it - this time more slowly, turned back to her and began to strike at her relentlessly. She couldn't actually remember a fight in her life that was as intense as this moment. She didn't even have time to inspect her surroundings. She had to focus on the monster's movements. She did notice that Krushe was gone at some point though, but he had to still be nearby, since the harpoon in the leviathan's claw was still there. As she drew her circles trying to escape all that this thing had to launch at her, she eventually noticed something coming closer. Something big. Something beige. Right behind the giant lizard, a worried-looking Onion-San drew closer, faster than the leviathan was chasing Undyne. Just in time, at least if he was going to help. It was getting really dangerous. One time, when one of its claws smashed down next to her, it got so close she could feel the shifting water pressing right on her skin.

Probably from a mix of blind rage and its perception being clouded from all the pain it must have been in at that point, it didn't notice Onion-San approaching when it kept trying to grab Undyne over and over, until he actually worked up the courage to move forward and wrap his tentacles around the creature's lower half, constricting its legs' movements completely. Even when it finally noticed, it kept flailing and striking with its forelegs in attempts to get hold either of his new attacker or his previous target, but it was too late, and Undyne could rest at the necessary distance. Soon, Krushe came around as well, with the back component of his harpoon in his hands again. They probably thought the same thing. With how this thing was still struggling after all that, it would need one more particular reason for it not to go hunting for prey on the surface - or not to go hunting at all. For a moment, the two of them looked at it in silence, until - despite there being no reason not to speak, Krushe just looked at her, took her spear to gesture it pointing at his eyes and then pointed up at the face of the leviathan. She soon understood what he meant, and she liked the idea.

With two motions, he smashed the component that used to hold the coil that was now stretched to the monster onto the ground, and expanded its form to attach itself onto the ground. That was when he finally spoke up. "* You're going to have to hurry. I can't do this for long." When she saw how his hands started to glow, she knew what he meant at once. Even though they had only known each other for a few hours and not even in a good way, it was like one quickly grasped what the other was thinking. If that made any sense. She started swimming up the the creature, knowing she would soon be in its reach, when the other fish summoned and fired a second harpoon of the same size as his one and hit the creature's other claw, before attaching it to the ground again, and winding in the coils of both with all that he had. Undyne sped up, since she knew that Krushe's grasp on both the leviathan's hands wouldn't last for too long with how strong this thing was and how exhausting this must have been for him.

When the monster snapped at her, she sped to the side to get a good shot at its right eye and fired straight away. When she had the necessary distance to look back, three of her spears were stuck in the increasingly desolate creature's eye. She only had to do it one more time. But her time was running out. With a quick move under the snapping jaws of the beast, she got to the other side and did the same. The ear-shattering screams signaled to her that she had done it, and once she was far away enough, she gave Onion-San the signal. "* That's it! You can let go!" He was of course unsure and exchanged looks with her until she gave him one more reassuring nod. Once his grip wasn't strong enough to hold it, the leviathan quickly broke free and - both bleeding eyes clenched shut - rushed way into the distant sea. This must have gotten rid of it for good, no matter how tough it was. The relief that overcame her when she grew sure of this was like whole arrays of thoughts that were gone were coming back. She suddenly remembered hearing the buzz of a motor in the background somewhere that she couldn't put a finger on. One more look back at the bottom of the sea revealed that Krushe had fainted from these few seconds of only helping restrain a really big lizard, with his harpoons now gone. He had fainted, but when he was carried past her by the tentacle monster, she assured herself that he was going to be alright. Sure, he was unbearable and that first maneuver was a really dumb move, but at least he could swim and maybe he could be some good for fighting as well.

What was up next for herself was to find the source of that sound. After looking all around, she finally spotted the lower bulk of a small boat with a motorized fan affixed to its back. She couldn't tell from here, who was on it though, so to be sure, she stayed low until she was right below it to surprise her sudden spectator. The sides were shaking back and forth, whoever was on it was moving very hectically. And cried out in fear when she lunged out of the water to grab onto its opposite side. "* Aah - wa - don't scare me like that!" It was Alphys, still in her flattering swimsuit, with some sort of hand-cannon in her hand, which had a large electrode of sorts where a gun would have its barrel. "* Undyne, quick! If you can bring that thing back up here..." She picked up a multi-functional tool she had dropped in her shock and tried to adjust something on the machine in her hand. "* ...maybe I can repurpose this charger to stun or shock..."

She stopped when she looked back to see the reassuring face Undyne made, when she shook her head at Alphys' suggestions. "* No need. It's all good now. That thing's not coming back." After giving some time for the small lizard to lean in the opposite direction, Undyne pulled herself up to get in this little boat. "* So where'd you get this thing?"

She nervously looked off to the side, while driving the boat back to the coast. "* Uh...I-i-i I already had it."

She didn't recall packing a boat. She would have remembered this. "* Really? Where was it?"

"* I...had it on me." Her hesitation, the way she avoided looking at her, she was hiding something about this boat. But before much more was said, they were already arriving a little further down from where everyone else was, so Undyne just pretended to let it slide, left it, walked a few steps until she heard weird electric noises before looking back. It was folding itself together like all this stuff Alphys made phones turn into, but in spite of the lizard's attempt at covering the result on the ground, Undyne recognized it to be her own phone. And when she realised that Undyne had seen this, she quickly picked it up and looked around to stuff it into one of her pockets, but she wasn't wearing her lab coat. "* I-i-i can explain this!"

Undyne pointed at it, knowing it was right behind Alphys' back. "* It could do this...the whole time?"

Alphys was trying to smile, sweat drops were running down her face. "* You...uh...weren't supposed to kno..." She looked around so as to look for some way of skipping this conversation somehow. When she got the message of the approaching Captain, that she couldn't, she finally held it back out with a very nervous look. "* Happy twenty-sixth birthday...?"

What? "* It's not my birthday yet. What're you talking about?" She couldn't help feel a bit insulted at first.

"* A-a-and you w-w-weren't supposed to know yet either." As if it was all too late and whatever secret there was, was out, Alphys let out a deep sigh and her stance relaxed a lot. Her fear had made way for annoyance. "* I'm going to need to get a new present now, aren't I?" From her reaction, it seemed she was noticing and didn't like how Undyne was coming closer. "* L-look, you always left it alone and you know how you kept saying you wished we could just relax and fish in the middle of one of the lakes were all the good fish are and we couldn't, because you can't relax when you're all the way in the scary lakes and..." What happened next, I'd prefer not to describe in great detail. Needless to say, they came back to the others alive.

* * *

"* They seem to be alright."

"* Thank goodness." With a sigh of relief, Asgore went back to sit down on one of the spread-out towels to calm down. "* And this would be..." He looked over to see Onion-San carrying the other waterman in one tentacle and dropping him, once out of the water. He was sure Papyrus and Toriel could tend to him, as they already were before he had a chance to come any closer. If he came out of there alive, he was going to be fine. "* Then tell me again, do leviathan attacks happen regularly?"

William just waved that aside and walked a slow circle in confusion. "* Not at all actually. They live at sea levels so low, you can't even reach them in a proper diving suit. The pressure alone would kill any human being." That would be why he never saw only ever heard of them, and only from the mouth of denizens of the sea. At least any live ones he had never seen. "* The coast guard would be a lot more strongly staffed and heavily armed if that was something that happens. Anyone around only knows about them from footage taken by submarines and robots. They never come anywhere near up here. There's got to be...but if...no. Even if someone among your Monsters had some sort of attractant or pheromone it reacted to, it would never be close enough to draw one all the way here. Especially within a few hours."

"* I was rather thinking it to be a trap, then again, come to think of it...He had arranged our trip a day in advance, but if Victor had intended this, then the beast would probably have struck, when the area was crowded and many easy targets remained. "

William turned back to him in shock. "* Are you saying this was on purpose?"

What was he supposed to think? What else at least. "* You said it's an occurrence that doesn't happen, yet it did, and it happened just now, that we were here. Of all the days, all the weeks, all the months, all the years, today was the one day it would happen? That sounds like there are a lot of circumstances normally preventing it, yet this time they just so happened not to. Yes. I don't know who would do such a thing, but this being mere chance is even less likely than it happening at all in the first place."

The human was heading left and right, sweating profusely, and moving about as if he was interrupting his own thoughts in his mind, or struggling come to grips with something. "* But...wha...how...Wait. This could have gone very differently. What if this thing had been left to wreck everything here? Maybe even destroy the buildings around? And how many people might have died until the coast guard even arrived, and after that as well? The amount of lives lost and damages caused would have impacted everyone to a degree? Who would want that?"

He could think of someone, but he preferred not to think about them for too soon. On the other hand, maybe this was the time. At least in so far as to find out whether they were still alive. "* Say, do you still have such a thing as a centaur? Men that look like horses, only that they can speak and have a human-shaped upper body?"

At once, the out-of-place man stood still, faced the king and nodded. "* Yes...why?"

As he feared. They were still around. For the time being, he could only hope not to be forced to engage with them for as long as possible. There were only bad consequences to be had from the Monsters of today meeting them and finding out why they were still up here, while all other Monsters were banished. What they might do...the humans might not understand their hostility to them and this might damage their prospects of life up here. "* Those submarines you mentioned, there wouldn't happen to be centaurs of them too, would there?"

"* Well I guess there could, strictly speaking, maybe one single one here and there, but it's unlikely. I mean most of them just stay in their reservation." He did say it was possible, but from his expression, it seemed like it was so tremendously unlikely that one would venture far enough out of that reservation of theirs for a life outside to work their way into such a situation, that Asgore saw fit to put that possibility aside for the time being. Be it by bringing it here or luring it here, arranging for this leviathan to come here, considering the apparent distance of their habitats to the coast, would require either the knowledge and bribery of one or multiple people in very specific positions, or a tremendous amount of resources, both financial and in form of contacts. As well as the malice to willingly allow for the destruction this might have caused if it weren't for him and the others, to happen.

This again spoke against the idea of the centaurs lying behind this. Not so much the necessity for malice, but the prospect of consequences. No matter how much they might shelter themselves in whatever area they claim for themselves, there was no way they didn't trade with the humans outside and probably relied on goods of some kind from outside. To add to that was how close to here they must live, assuming they didn't move very far from their old home. No, whoever did this must have at least to some degree been sheltered from possible impacts, either simply through distance, in which case he wouldn't know why someone from a completely different part of the world that hadn't met them would have a reason for this, or by some form of extreme financial security provided by other ways. Among other things, one such way would be a plain excess in wealth. Suddenly, Asgore flinched at the dark suspicion that he might have been at fault for this himself.

* * *

"* Is the Kharazian special to your satisfaction?" Andrew ran his hand along the smooth fabric of his table, before looking back up across the long range of hand-crafted and prepared meals served only for him and his guest oftentimes made by cooks flown in only to provide the catering for the visit of that exact guest, that he ended up facing.

The person on the other side, a man very slightly shorter, but of broader stature than him, dressed in a black suit and a yellow tie - very formal considering that they knew and worked with each other for a long time - and his hat for once not on his head but hung up on a stand, was poking around in the decoratively arranged set of smaller dishes combined forming smoothly crafted patterns, trying to get a grip on a small slice of tender meat. "* It feels a little too mushy.", he answered, still chewing the last piece, with small bits of it stuck in his long beard. It was Michael Birkenbaum, co-owner of Koppen&Birken and Andrew's grumpy long-time business partner. You could hear the resentment in the tone of his voice even in the echoes that resounded back from the brightly lit walls of their spacious dining room. "* Are you sure this was prepared properly?"

He would always find something, would he not? Andrew lazily sat back in his chair. "* It is done as every time, by the same cook you like, with the same procedure I always order. Then again, if it's of lesser quality, it's by far the only thing here, is it now?" After all, they threw away by far most of what was made for him. He couldn't eat all of what lay across this length even if he wanted to. The two of them together couldn't. It was only all made so that his guest could choose each time. He twirled his hand to accompany switching the subject to something more substantial. "* Now, I doubt that you merely came here for the catering. Surely there are matters to attend to."

Michael, now more eagerly biting off a piece of apparently more 'properly prepared' chimpanzee à la Grenaux, took him at his offer to get to the subject matter. "* Yes..." He finished chewing before he went on. "* The leviathan. It appeared that there were no casualties. The Monsters disposed of it themselves."

"* He seemed rather receptive, considering, this 'king' Asgore. Do you think he understood the message in spite of that?"

Now, even while munching - he really showed so little manners when he was among his own - his guest just waved Andrew's concerns aside. "* Of course he understood it, with what these creatures look like - if he's been their king and is alive, he must be pretty bright. Besides, I've arranged for whatever committee members do bother to aid him and his - Monsters - to be ones that would be sure to quickly fill him in on how things work up here. Can't have any sudden surprises if at any indefinable moment, he starts seeing through the veil and takes some sudden and rash steps in an unexpected moment of disillusionment, could we? What I'd worry about is their willingness to aid. Or at least how much they will end up aiding us. Doesn't his reaction to our servants' little...transgression on their first day up here seem a bit alarmingly harsh and immediate to you?"

Such unnecessary worries. "* Oh no, far from it." Andrew leaned back forward and looked Michael directly in the eyes, all the way across the table, to draw his attention to his point. "* Think it through. A leader of his people, pursues the interests of his - non-human - people and shows no hesitation to big and bold steps in that pursuit? He sounds perfect. He will act as though under our complete control, with no need for no more input at all."

He had gotten it across, but Michael didn't seem to agree. Being done with one piece, he pointed the fork at his host. "* Apparently not quite so.", he said, referring to their little corrective signal they had sent to him.

More minuscule problems not worth consideration. "* Of course it might need a little subtle guidance here and there, but that is much less draining than the usual, is it not? Can you not once take an opportunity to relax in life? Especially when it presents itself so perfectly."

It seemed that Michael was growing a little more disgruntled with how he was eating with an open moth between sentences. "* Perhaps it's you that should be relaxing a bit less. While we're at that, Archon Shalit has had a word with me." Andrew didn't allow that to show, but it felt like his stomach was dropping a bit at the moment of hearing that title. "* He wants to know when you move on. In life I mean. Find yourself a wife, settle down, do your part to carry on the heritage of the tribe." Andrew remained silent. He would rather not for several reasons, but he couldn't afford to utter a single one of them. Whether it was by means of accidents or suicides, Elves who said the wrong things when faced with an Archon - be it indirectly or face to face - usually didn't live long after doing so. And when someone invoked one's loyalty to the tribe and in doing so, implicitly called it to question, that was a clear sign that the matter was serious to a degree that decided upon life and death. Especially for people in positions such as his own. "* He is growing impatient, and I can't think of many excuses. You should start getting a move on."

"* Not to worry. As soon as a presentable wife shows herself, I will follow suit. And I already make efforts to search for one." He didn't seem to quite convince Michael, but it was enough for him to move to less pressing things. They continued their meal and their discussion of other matters, until it was time and Michael, in either his diligence or his faith, prepared the scroll for his daily prayer, in which Andrew of course was obliged to partake. But after that, they soon shook hands and said their goodbyes. And once he had convinced himself that his business partner's limousine was certainly gone, Andrew gave his personnel's coordinator the instructions for the evening, before he packed his things to be chauffeured to his own destination for the evening. There was one place he regularly visited, far off in an old town just a bit further towards the city than the suburbs, where something strange had happened to him. Something new. When he was most vulnerable at that. He didn't know what meanings it would have for him, but he knew that he wouldn't find out by not trying to investigate. Once at the station, he left to pass the rest of the way by foot. There was no need to involve his personnel any more than was necessary. The chauffeur found it strange from the looks of it, but he didn't object.

From there, he made his way to a place of which it was probably better that he went there without his phone. Or most of the contents of his wallet. A bath house. There were other guests, of course, but he intended to reconstruct the event that led him to the last encounter, and this entailed staying here until he was the last one left. Here he waited. In one of the inner chambers, underground for several reasons and connected to the outside world with only one door. And as time went on, and soon the last person other than him had been gone for a while, it finally happened again. With him still in the water. In front of the door slid shut a solid metal compartment, preventing anyone from opening it even from the other side. A strange wave rippled through the room - as he had been told last time, to dismantle any electronics that could possibly film or broadcast the encounter, and on a screen somehow projected from nowhere, on the opposite wall, appeared footage of a small creature that sat close enough to the camera to fill out almost all of it. "* h0i" It raised it's front paws to once more adjust it's helmet before going on. "* U haf 2 stahp elf atax."

"* Hoi to you too, my friend."

"* Wii r srs!1"

"* My friend, I have no idea who you are, and I can only do so much. I already made for their life up here to go smoothly with Salvador out of the way, have I not? And nobody was hurt, anyway."

The cute little creature switched out it's wide open smile for a reserved smile coming from a raised head. "* Do I look to you like I'm playing games?" Andrew was about to raise his finger to interject, but whatever he would say, he would have been cut off. "* Monsters are off-limits for attacking, okay? And it doesn't matter behind how many layers of orders you hide, we will know." Luckily, it slipped back into it's less subtle and more happy-appearing ways. "* woi u no stahp attax?"

Okay, it seemed he had to speak a bit more clearly. "* My friend, that wasn't an attack, it was a warning shot. If I would just shut down any actions of this caliber, people might doubt my loyalty. And I intend to keep my head. Also, what did you expect to happen? This - Asgore - publicly endorsed Daniel Victor. I don't know how much you know about how this works, but Victor would put the interests of his own country over those of the tribe. The Archons do not approve of him. His election would not be in our interest. He is not considered kosher. So of course to a degree he upset them when he went on stage like that and said what he said. It was bound to invoke the wrath of the Archons." He wove his hand to give the beginning of his recital a sarcastic pretense of gravitas. "* 'Those who do not serve the tribe will suffer the consequences...' - blah, blah blah you're bound to pick up the old phrases if you really monitor so many things. You know what? I'll tell you something. If that king keeps his hands out of international politics, he doesn't have to fear any Elven intervention any more. There's not much he can do to draw the wrong kind of attention if he and his Monsters keep to themselves."

"* Juss doo wat u c4n 2 stop atax okei?" With this, the screen faded out again, and the solid door that had been there before, slid open. Save for him remembering this encounter, everything was as if it had never happened. The walls were pretty proof, so even if someone tried listening in from outside for no reason, they would not have heard or understood anything. For all that Andrew knew, it could have just been a voice in his head that only showed itself in this room. Luckily, there was a way to find out. On his first meeting with - this - it gave him the name of a company, and announced that they would make it disappear until they next met. As expected, on the next day it was gone. When tracking it's stocks, it seemed like it had opened up and sold all it's shares to an array of different companies. After getting his things together and getting dressed again, he set off back home to check. If indeed for some strange reason, in the near future all the new shareholders just decided to sell right back to the original owner, he would be more assured that what transpired in that room in the bath house wasn't just a figment of his imagination.

* * *

"One such bigger creature that they used to hunt for food is the leviathan. Originally a reptile that developed the capacity to breathe under water over time. Tales about them describe them in all sorts of ways, all the way to just confusing them for whales. Of course the real reptilian ones as described in great detail in some human and Elven religious tales exists, but is much less likely to be encountered by any surface-dwelling creature. Especially in this part of the world. In fact, if it weren't for said tales, I wouldn't have known about them myself, and if it weren't for tideriders from the very early days of living underground, describing them over and over, I would have discarded any belief in them along with the rest of my faith.

They have some overlap in their natural habitats with Chasmsprouts and are one of the reasons why the latter are so tough. Of course, because of that, the leviathan himself is also a very tough creature. His skin alone would probably withstand human bullets, they can easily break through rock with a single smash and all that is putting aside the strength of their jaws and their tail.

They sense their prey for the most part through olfactory sensors to detect the smell of prey. This is because in comparably narrow cliffs where any sound could be echoing from anywhere, echolocation wouldn't be that great a method. But to smells, they respond all the more strongly and in theory, you can lure a leviathan anywhere you like, across any stretch you like as long as you lay out a trail of a substance that attracts their attention."


	20. Retrieved Childhoods

A Doctor's Duty

Chapter 09

Retrieved Childhoods

* * *

Everything that followed on that evening was smooth and free of further issues. The Dogi made sure that everyone came home in one piece and their trust in the human locals proved justified. After coming home together from another eventful day on the surface - save for that grown human tag-along - even the first to leave the Underground, the small group of six Monsters and the child didn't see the point in spending the night anywhere but their old and comfy homes down here. And after a good night sleep, it felt to everyone for a brief time like the excitement would end, yet everyone knew better. Asgore was left with worries on whether taking a stand for someone promising in times of perpetual complacency might have roused particular wealthy ilk and whether that meant that there would be more coincidental attacks of oversized wildlife or other manners of recourse would follow.

To add to that, when everyone was braced for combat with their sudden attacker, Sans lay back where he was before - completely relaxed and with no intention to help. The latter part wasn't surprising but with how unfazed he seemed by what was transpiring left Asgore with room to speculate whether determination had been involved in what happened. And how often this day could possibly have happened until it all ended as well as it did. If he was right, Frisk was indeed still watching over them in his own, patience-demanding ways. In time, he would speak with Sans to get some clarity on how much was happening that never ended up happening after all. Asgore was supposed to be the one watching over the child, not the other way round. He couldn't allow himself to fail as a father. Not again.

But the matter of the moment was coming up before him. Small, brown men with the fur, teeth and tails of beavers, dressed in simple worker's attire. "* At the request of Doctor Alphys and yourself, the Builver crew reports in. Other groups of builders are coming in from near and far. We all heard word that there is work to be done?"

Asgore couldn't suppress a chuckle. Sure, Alphys wasn't always reliable when it came to results, bot no-one could claim she wasn't trying to. This sure went fast, and if she was the first that they named, it was safe to guess that their sudden appearance right here in front of his own house wasn't entirely out of their own impulse. "* I presume you could say that again. Follow me, won't you?"

The growing group of people lumbered after him down the stairs of his house, across the bridge and to the cliff outside. Some of the Monsters seemed to be out here for the first time and covered their eyes from getting blinded by the sun. There, he stopped to point along the road downwards at the side. "* Plenty of space around the village you can see right here is what we have acquired. And those who are eager to live outside have very thin patience. How well do you think you can manage this?"

The Builver that first spoke to him, a little taller and more cleanly dressed than the others, scratched his chin when inspecting the area from afar. "* Hmm, that's going to depend. We will need detailed information on what is within bounds, who has special wishes, what these are, where you can help us with the materials and how many others come to us. At the moment, we're four different crews who all joined up for this with a few independent workers, but there are more people coming to us as we speak. The more there are, the faster we can get done. Guys? Bring us some wood and tools, we need ourselves a little outpost up here!" A few of the others that followed the one that currently led them hurried back into the Underground. As for Asgore, he knew that currently wouldn't be a good time to talk to Sans with no-one around, but that didn't mean he couldn't call to him for a little help. He called him on the phone to ask him for copies from the documents he had received from the purchase of the land, to have the part with the detailed outlining of what property exactly was in his possession. With this, it would be much easier for the amassing workers to plan out this venture.

As usual, he was there within minutes and came out of nowhere. Of the growing amount of workers - sometimes of different kinds of Monsters - that came through the solid stone doorframe, the leading Builver sent off some to scout out certain areas marked on the lists he had gotten and look for the boundary stones of the outer patches, so they could mark them in one way or the other. For lack of much else to do, Asgore took the time to enjoy looking down the cliff to the already brightly shun-on landscapes and roads. Soon, this would be their new home, and breathing fresh air like this would be something he would get used to. He wouldn't even be bothered by William coming up the path, as he sent him right back to help the Monsters figure out what a human cornerstone even looked like. Over time, more Builvers came outside with wooden planks and the tools to fix them together for a comparably broad stand that they set up on the wall of the wider path of the trail down the cliff.

They even prepared a sign above reading 'residency registration'. Granted, as of yet, they couldn't make any promises, as they needed more specifics on the area first, but they liked to plan ahead and the sooner they knew who wanted to live up here and what they would have to prepare, the better. He wanted to make sure that all of his friends got their slot, so he gave their names, before ringing up on everyone to tell them about this. For Toriel, he just called Frisk and had him tell her. Undyne didn't seem available at the moment, but Alphys wasn't busy at all.

* * *

"* what...sure, will do." Sans folded up his phone and left his room. He had been napping all the way until recently, but it probably was time to get moving anyway.

When he left his room, Papyrus was still unpacking the stuff from the day before. Even he was too powered out to do that before going to bed. "I SEE YOU SAW FIT TO GET UP TOO, SANS."

Sans went down the stairs without a word and slowly walked up to Papyrus with his hands in his pockets. "* say...you ready for this? looking forward to moving out?" He knew his brother well enough to figure most answers, but it was better to play it through regardless.

"IN ALL HONESTY, I'M NOT EVEN SURE. I'LL MISS OUR HOUSE." Yeah, figured. "I'LL MISS THE COUCH, I'LL MISS THE CUPBOARD, THE PAINTING, THE STOVE..."

Sans thought the same, but he didn't care that much. But when it concerned Pap, it concerned him too. But he looked back up at his brother with widening eyesockets as he had an idea. "* wait, what if ya don't have to miss it, 'cause it'll all be the same."

Papyrus gave him a disapproving look. "THIS IS SILLY, WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?"

He took a step back, to try and really sell this with body language and gestures. "* if ya like all these things, if you're comfortable with this, why change it? we could live just like this, but on the surface."

Papyrus' eyes narrowed. "COULD WE? NO...I MEAN IS IT POSSIBLE? THIS IS SOME KIND OF JOKE IS IT?" Sans shook his head, and then made way for the younger skeleton to turn all around. "GO ON...JUST LIKE THIS..." He understood that this was a one-way thing. If they decided it, there was no turning back. "NO. THERE IS ONE THING I WOULD CHANGE." He walked over to the couch. "IF THIS AND THE TV WERE SWAPPED, WE COULD SIT DOWN AND ENJOY THE SUN ANY TIME AND THERE WOULD BE SPACE FOR A DOOR HERE FOR ANOTHER ROOM." With that last bit, he was talking about the wall behind the television. He was right, there was room for another room there. Actually, there already was a room there, below the upper ones, but it was inaccessible by normal means and Sans used it to store some stuff in there. He would have to move it to the lab if they really made that change. Who knew what Pap would need an extra room for. "ALSO...IT'S VERY WARM OUTSIDE."

"* not always." Of course Papyrus didn't know how seasons worked. It was always winter in Snowdin and it was always summer in Hotland. He didn't have much experience with things changing, even though the temperature did change a bit. Just not as much as it did up there. "* it's warm now."

"SO WHAT?"

"* in a few months, it's gonna be pretty darn cold."

"WHAT? YOU MEAN SNOWDIN-COLD?"

Sans nodded. "* maybe a little colder."

Papyrus' eyesockets narrowed. He started to get it. "DEMANDING...BUT STILL! WE COULD DO WITH A BIGGER WINDOW. EVER...SO SLIGHTLY...BIGGER."

Sans nodded. "* coming right up." He called Asgore back, who hadn't moved an inch. Still right outside enjoying the view. "* yeah, we already decided. yes, everything exactly the same. except an extra room next to the stairs...yeah there. and a bi..." Papyrus was nervously staring at him. "* itty bitty bit bigger window." With their little order concluded, he folded up his phone again. "* aaand it's done. pretty sure we can expect just that."

Papyrus, now beaming with anticipation for...well not much new actually...left the last few things as they were and made for the exit. "WOWIE! I'VE GOT TO TELL UNDYNE ABOUT THIS." He was gone at once. Sans shrugged, wasn't like he had nothing to do. For a start, this mighta been a good time to visit Alphys.

Alphys was as usual in her lab. Doors locked to both sides, Undyne off training and she herself was sitting in front of the computer browsing a place she preferred to keep to herself for the time being, telling humans - who of course somehow had vague knowledge of what happened the day before - what had happened from close-up. And their reaction - oh those humans - it was always the Elves with them, wasn't it? "* I wonder what kind of ears they had.", she read aloud with a chuckle.

What shook her completely was a voice from behind her answering. "* well that's pretty sharp then." Sans stood right behind her back, only a few inches away. "* looks like they're bringing things straight to the - point."

The doctor slowly turned around. "* Wait...you know about Elves?"

Sans shrugged with his eyes closed. "* you really that surprised?" He had a point, after all those other things, so she shook her head in agreement. It really didn't surprise her any more whenever he seemed to know something she didn't know where from. If he showed up here though...however he did that, she could guess why. She she didn't expect was him pushing her to the side. "* hey, these are the guys pap was so annoyed about, right?" He had a smirk to what he was saying that she didn't like. He went into an extremely fast typing frenzy in which - from what she read - was just rattling down pun after pun after pun and only posting them all at once when the limit was reached. He went on to type puns in hyper speed to the limit again and again, until the other anonymous posters begged him to stop. Only then did he link to them and write to them: "* so i hear you didn't like the skeleton's scarf." He didn't even continue, he just closed the browser. "* i'm pretty sure that kinda stuff can wait."

Normally, Alphys would have been mildly annoyed, but she really did spend way too much time talking to the humans and reading up on all that dark stuff they gave her. Also, she was looking forward to what was coming next. "* So are we going to..."

"* yeah." Yes! They were going to go to that other part of the lab that she somehow never found. The one with the fascinating machines she had never had the time to look into or try to use. "* let's get going." All the way down with the 'bathroom' to the true lab, where they would do the same thing they did last time. He turned off the lights and took her through one corridor, only for her to find herself in a completely different place from where it usually led on the other side. The same big hall with enormous, complicated-looking machines. "* where's the holdup?" She noticed that she was staring at them so long, as Sans was already wandering off to the side into different halls, with the lights in them getting turned on each time he passed the switches. The gallery of similarly impressive rooms, one after the other with platforms separated through railings towering high over what each room had to offer, contained so many details to each device in each room, it was impossible to memorize a single one properly.

At some point, she was just passing each one with a brief glance, fidgeting about with her hands at the thought of understanding and even operating them. Sans was leaning against a doorframe that led to a staircase. When they went up, she noticed an exit on the way leading to those same upper platforms from which you could look down on each room. When finally up those stairs, they were simply in another level of similar halls, only that Sans took a turn to head into some outer corridors - much smaller and more similar to the parts of the lab that Alphys knew. They were much darker and more like the parts that she knew as well. The rooms they passed through had tables lined up with more inventions, but this time they were small enough to fit onto those tables and small enough to be held in your hands, or at least carried around. On the other side lay another hall, with an enormous machine bearing cranes, mechanical hands, various tools, some for her recognizable, some not so, lots of hatches to the sides with unintelligible signs on them, a large platform with self-moving plates and securing components to the left and right to hold in place whatever might be on the platform.

The skeleton, standing and looking back at her patiently with his hands in his pockets, waited for her to arrive at the computer in front of it, lined up with a wide console with keyboards, pads, buttons and levers, as well as four different screens above them. When he powered it up, what eventually came into view seemed to be some sort of 3d editing software she hadn't seen before. And doubted she would see anywhere else. "* it's actually for making machine parts. tools and stronger metals? This thing's got 'em." He opened several additional windows and drew some lines to create a sample shape. "* here's where you make the forms, and this is for picking and assigning materials. so if I..." He browsed way through the materials all the way, until he found several synthetic materials she only really got to know from analyzing human garbage. He then loaded a saved file he seemed to have created earlier. A figure of Papyrus posing on a small solid platform. He gestured her to take a step back, before smashing the big red button and shouting "* rise, my creation!" At once, the sounds of gears grinding, steam being emitted and the fizzling of machinery coming to life hailed the beginning of the hands and other attached tools coming together, a large, cloggy machine being placed on the platform from above and encased by two shielding units, only leaving Alphys just that to see until the drilling and shuffling noises started fading and the many arms of the machine retracted, coming to an increasingly silent halt.

Sans passed the computer and stepped on the platform, only to come back with a small plastic scale model of Papyrus, mouth and eye-sockets wide open, in his battle body, one arm resting on his pelvis and the other stretched out with it's hand to the side. It was very detailed, properly coloured and everything. "* It's...a 3d printer..."

He closed his eyes and shrugged, before tossing it onto an entire heap of similar figurines. "* more like a 3d forge. any material you want, this thing's got it. any metal you need, this thing can bend and shape it. can't think of much that this thing can't make or help make. and these things..." He pointed at the pile of small plastic Papyruses. "* if pap ever really gets famous, i can make some money sellin' them."

She looked back at him in disbelief. "* Do you really think that's going to happen?"

He didn't even drop some sarcastic act he might have been holding up. "* hey, ya never know. you're not givin' him enough credit. he's got a lot in him. that special attack's just the tip of the iceberg."

He was moving to the exit very slowly, while they both were awkwardly silent. There wasn't much else left to say. She better got going trying to figure out how this editing program worked and how to get this 'invention' together. She had been sunk in exploring the different options and how they affected any models she created for quite some time when she next looked back to find him gone and the door to this room closed. Well, Alphys took it thankfully. With not even an option to leave, she could much better concentrate on work here.

He was pretty sure that Alphys could be left alone with her work. She was the kinda person that liked to get into these kinds of memorizing systems and problem solving. Next up was to check what Papyrus was up to. He was still planning on setting up a stand next to whatever the Builvers got going, but he preferred to do that later and when no-one was looking. Jumping from area to area, he finally spotted him in Waterfall, walking down the path from Undyne's ruins to the pier above the swamp that was more of a lake further inwards. "* 'sup. had any luck?"

He wasn't even that surprised to suddenly see him walk next to him. He had gotten used to it. "IT'S REALLY STRANGE. I CHECKED THE PLACE UNDER THE BRIDGE WHERE SHE CLIMBS AND RUNS, AND THEN ON WHERE SHE TRAINS FOR COMBAT. THERE'S ONLY ONE MORE PLACE I CAN THINK OF, BUT IT'S A STRETCH. HERE." They went quite a bit along the wooden planks. "THERE'S THIS GUY SHE CHALLENGED TO A REMATCH OF THAT RACE YESTERDAY. AND I THINK SHE DOESN'T WANT TO LOSE."

"* really? what kinda guy?"

"YOU KNOW, THE OTHER UNDYNE. THE FASTER ONE. THE GUY THAT HELPED US LAST EVENING." That still left open the question why, luckily, he went on: "THEY'LL GO ON A DATE IF SHE LOSES, AND I THINK SHE - REALLY - DOESN'T WANT TO LOSE." So that was how it was.

Still walking, Sans pinched Papyrus with his elbow a few times. "* he did look like a pretty good - catch!" Pity there was no reaction. Papy just pretended like he didn't hear it.

After calling her name a few times, Undyne didn't show herself. The taller of the two gave it some time before he went over to hang off the edge and dip his skull in the water to look around. It didn't seem like he was seeing anything he was looking for though. In the distance, on the other side of the lake, Sans saw a small arrow-shaped pattern in the water pacing in their direction. "* woah woah woah, get back!" He pulled Papyrus back up just before whatever was closing in was going to reach them. With a loud rush of water launched around, a lengthy blue figure leaped out, banged her head on the pier and fell back into the water. Mere seconds later, moaning and with one hand covering her forehead most of the time, Undyne resurfaced and climbed back out of the water, in the end with the help of the two of them.

"INCONCEIVABLE. THIS IS THAT IMPORTANT TO YOU?"

She was still stumbling left and right and trying to get her balance back. "* I couldn't sleep last night. Mostly." That would explain the dark rings under her eyes. "* I've got to win this!"

"* woah, this guy's really got you - in deep water."

She didn't seem to like the tone of his voice. "* And what're you on about?"

"* just sayin'. if it's such a big deal, why not just not show up?"

"* That's what Alphys said, too. But I can't do that. You know me." A grin. Not the sign of someone who was as afraid as she thought she was.

"* here's a thing. frisk's been on a date with alphys, right?"

"* Wait, how do you even know that?" Because he watched it from far away, but that he did, and how he could, she couldn't know.

"* that didn't tear you two apart though. right?" And it brought them together. But this, he didn't need to say.

And it was working. She was calming down. "* Yeah...and they're not together..." Then she shook her head and was worked up again. "* ...wait this is different!"

"* how?" Granted, he didn't really care either way. He just liked to see where this was going.

She was getting louder as if backed to a corner. "* 'Cause he's..."

He nodded. "* yeah?"

"* ...and I'm..."

"* yeah, and something's wrong with that...how?"

And this was where he get her all hissing and stomping. "* You know what I'm talking about!" Yes he did. But if she did, he wasn't so sure.

Sans threw up his arms to pretend to not understand. "* i dunno what you're getting worked up about. i think you're making this out to be way worse than it is. it even sounds like you're looking forward to it."

"* Damn you, I'm gonna..." Undyne was stepping in his direction and he was backing off. She was really taking his bait. Hook, line and sinker. All the better. With Papyrus desperately running after them and calling for them to stop, he just sped ahead as fast and far as he needed to stay out of her reach. He had to hand it to her though, even after her workout, she still had a lot of stamina. If not before, she would need a drink before heading to Hotland. Which became the time in which Papyrus could catch up. All that Sans wanted to do from here on in, was to power her out so she calmed down after he had his fun, so they could then head up to see what Asgore's been on about. His choice of direction wasn't a coincidence. When she was visibly strained and walking across the bridge, he knew it was time to start waiting for her. They had shaken off Papyrus, but he was bound to find his way. He knew the path here off by heart. "* One day, Sans, one day, I swear...", she mumbled while coming along.

They waited for a while at the lift for his brother to arrive stumbling and heaving, and wiping the sweat off his skull. "YOU'RE...ALL...TOO...FAST." He leaned on the wall at the side while pressing the button to open the doors.

It was only when they passed the resort that Undyne spoke again. "* So where are we going anyway?"

"OH RIGHT, YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW." Papyrus went on to explain the situation to her. "AND NOW EVERYONE WHO HAS SPECIAL WISHES FOR LIVING UP THERE NEEDS TO GET THEM WRITTEN DOWN."

It got her thinking. "* so you and alphys moving together, or...?"

"* I dunno. It's a pretty big - you know what? Yes! Yes we are!" She seemed hellbent on making a point. But it lifted her spirits and she was back to the usual again. She only really hesitated and decided to call the doctor to ask about the whole thing when they were already outside, standing in a short queue in front of the wooden stand. She was predictably busy, but there was still time to make additions. Most important for the time being, was only really rough stuff that would allow them to outline how to arrange it all. This village was gonna be all from the ground up arranged and built to the wishes of the Monsters that would live there. Some would probably have to cut back on some stuff they might ask for, just like how Undyne was listing thing after thing she wanted her house to have, before getting reeled in and settling for a pool and a little, solid area for training.

* * *

Mom wasn't kidding, when she said they wouldn't have much. Not that this would have meant that much to Frisk, but you can only so often have the same solitary life here again and again until it got boring and he knew that. But whenever he was here, he loved it regardless. Even when he was an enemy they were obliged to hunt, the Monsters here were nicer and more hesitant to attack him than anywhere else and it was indescribable how much he liked getting spoiled on every meal Mom served. He only didn't dare venture too far into the ruins for fear of thinking about who might be there, alone in the dark. On the other side, in Snowdin, the puzzles were still there. It was just that nobody set them up to block the path any more. He was hoping this would be a day without much happening. Not the kind of day where you redid an entire afternoon because it kept ending badly in some way. Eventually, he figured out that the solution to the day before was to tell the big fish guy that passed by after the race, that he should get back to the beach after everyone had gathered to leave. That way, he was there to help when the giant lizard attacked. No, this was going to be just him making a snowman and maybe figuring a more fun setup for one of the puzzles. He couldn't be the only one that found those fun.

When he was almost done with a third figure next to the subtle lump in the snow that was once Sans' not-snowman, he saw Mom picking out her phone. "* Greetings. Yes? Oh, what is it? Oh no, I apologize. I think we had enough excitement recently." After nodding a few times and "* ...oh, hello little one." After nodding a few times and apparently having someone on the other end who was talking very intensely, she beckoned Frisk to come closer. "* My child, it is for you."

She handed it to him, the front surface was still warm from what little time she had spoken on it. "* Hey Frisk! Where you at?" It was oran...Rick. It was Rick. "* Snowdin, huh? Can't say I have very fond memories of that. I just heard about what happened yesterday." Wait...he did? This must have been all over the news or something like that. "* No, couldn't hear about it anywhere. Didn't really know about it until bluebunny up here told us." Up here? "* Yeah, we're actually right outside. The three of us. We live right in Farfoot, remember? Not such a big walk. You better come out here, there's stuff happening. And..." A grown woman, probably his mother, reminded him of why he called. "* Oh right, so we've got time today and I wanted to know we could go to the park together." Okay, this changed everything. Suddenly, relaxing took a back seat to Frisk. An afternoon with his new friends was always something he was up for. But...He looked back up at Mom. She didn't seem happy with what she heard. More like she really wanted to have a relaxed day down here. This was the moment for a decision. Wherever he would go, she would follow, too. She had never left him alone for too long at all since the day they all first left. He knew that if he asked her, she would agree either way, but if she didn't want to go, neither would he. On the other hand, he didn't know how it would go and if she would end up liking it.

Feeling the weight that the impact of his choices put on him, it filled Frisk with DETERMINATION. With the cold of Snowdin's snow beneath his shoes and the breeze coming from the river, he looked back up to closely read Mom's face as he asked her. If they went and she really ended up not liking it, who said he couldn't just go back to this moment and redo the day the way she wanted it to go? "* Mom, can we go?"

Her eyebrows rose with concern. "* Haven't we had enough excitement yesterday? How about you and I just have a nice day down here." She gave him a warm smile, while stretching out her hand to get her phone back.

"* There's always time for a nice day down here. But the others don't always have time to get together outside. Please."

He inspected her reaction to everything he said very closely. He could readher well enough at this point after all. She liked him raising the prospect of spending many days relaxed and at home together, but she didn't like how he really wanted to go. As he expected. "* If you want to..."

He was himself beaming on the outside and in part on the inside. The decision to go was made as far as he was concerned, but he was also content in putting Mom first. "* Thank you." With the phone back in his hand, he responded to Rick again. "* We're on our way." When they arrived outside, he saw that Rick wasn't kidding. There was stuff happening. Monsters all around, some of which he had never seen before, were walking left and right. Some - the ones that seemed to be working one way or the other - were wearing overalls and otherwise clothed in work attire. A queue of Monsters was lining up in front of the stand and others were forming a crowd behind it. On the other side, Mettaton was standing in front of a camera with the view of the cliff behind him and further down the path, Dad was standing confidently and overlooking the path to the village, as well as the many Monsters that had come out here.

To the side of the stand, next to the nicecream stand, Rick was waving at them. Each one of the three was here with at least one parent. Understandable, playing on their own in the same village they live in and in broad daylight was a different thing than mixing into a crowd of complete foreigners and possibly getting lost in the vast Underground - they were all still children after all. "* So, you ready?" His Dad assured Mom that they'd be with them from start to finish, so there was no reason to worry about finding their way back here. The girl from last time wasn't here, but instead a soft-featured boy, a little shorter than Frisk. Frisk eyed him with wonder, but as if he knew what Frisk was wondering about, the boy made a pistol with his hand and pointed it at him. "* Bang, bang! I'm Sal."

Bradley, this time without his notebook, shook Frisk's hand. "* The others'll be there when we're there." While Mom and the other grown-ups were busy saying nothing really substantial yet talking a lot, Frisk took the freedom of excusing himself and heading back inside and around the corner. There had to be a reason why Sans didn't want him to open his dimensional box outside and with everyone watching, probably so that the people outside wouldn't get too curious and steal his phone to find out how it worked, but in here, in the corner, he could. After dialing his second box, black lines extended from the back of the phone and formed a large, floating cube that was open in his direction. The walls bore the wooden contours of the boxes down here in the Underground. Considering who had made his phone open up floating boxes that show up from nowhere on demand, and that the boxes scattered across the path to the lab shared a 'space' with one of his dimensional boxes, he could only guess who had placed them there.

He opened one of the bags of gold and got out what he needed before making the box disappear and walking back outside to buy a round of nicecream before they headed off. The ride on the train would have been much more comfortable if it weren't for the staring. It wasn't as much the case on their first trip to the city, but this time - probably because they were a much bigger group and therefore louder - they drew a lot more onlookers. When Frisk and everyone else got in, he soon found Mom and himself stared at by every other passenger he could see. They all had no shame in grabbing the opportunity to get as close, long and detailed a look at the 'human who freed the Monsters' as they could.

From how she acted, it seemed Mom could tell that Frisk was disturbed by this. At first, she nudged him and gave him a reassuring smile, while Sal's chattering Mom continued telling the story of a past holiday uninterrupted. Luckily, the ride didn't last very long and after a short time, they left the train for a suburban area where a short trip by foot led them to a large clearing, mostly covered by green grass but a part of it covered in wild growth of several kinds of flowers and other plants. On the other side a group much like themselves, small and consisting of children and grown-ups, presumably the rest of their little secret club of no longer lost souls, sat on benches arranged to both sides of a few garden tables. Pizza, quiche, tarte flambée, sandwiches and two little pies, a mix of bought and home-made meals and some ordinary food for outside were spread across the tables where they sat at, some of which were already partly or soon completely eaten.

When Frisk, Mom and the others arrived, they were greeted and they were given cups of tea from cylindrical thermos jugs, once they arrived. Everyone proceeded to greet each other and soon, the adults were back to their unsubstantial gestures of good manners, empty compliments and what added itself this time, gossip between two of the mothers. Occasionally they would try to include Mom or one of the other parents, who just nodded and affirmed whatever they were expected to affirm. Another part of it consisted of the others' parents asking Mom to try out whatever foods they thought were specific to humans and some of which they had made for this particular occasion. It appeared that they had a very...medieval idea of what life in the Underground was like. During the entire time, the other children were all staring at Frisk with a mix of excitement and joy, which Frisk soon realized was because this was the very first time all seven of them were together and in the flesh. When Bradley's Mom noticed, she asked him if they didn't want to go off to play. He didn't object, none of them did, but he asked for his notebook, on which as it turned out he had noted down the rules of several little party games. Some simple, some not so simple.

The others may have had memories of their new lives, yes but these were fake memories and they all knew they were. There were so many little games for get-togethers and parties that none of them had had an opportunity to play in their lives. At least not without getting the fun beaten right out of them either for the gall of winning, the crime of having fun while human or for some other non-reason. And now finally they could play them, because not only were they all-human but even if they weren't, they still had parents to look out for them, and who genuinely would do something if there was trouble. They first played werewolf, then started playing a ball game, where they had to pass a ball around while one outside person counted down at any pace they chose and whoever had the ball when it 'exploded' was out, and from games such as these all the way to simple tag variants, they played and played until they were worn out.

Once they were and the hours were passing, they all sat together in a circle on the ground while regularly checking that all the parents stayed out of hearing range. This was the point where they were going to exchange the stories they all to some degree shared. At least this was what Frisk had hoped they would spend time talking about, except that..."* Then I got lost in the dark cave with the crystals and that's where Undyne found and got me.", Sal finished. Frisk could have sworn he had just heard the exact same story from Brad. And Tess too. Four of the six different stories he was looking forward to hearing weren't different at all. Leaving the ruins, meeting Sans, taking a picture together, getting taken through a dubious shortcut to a sometimes differing way ahead area, where they would get caught and killed by Undyne each time. The last two didn't even make it to Waterfall or beyond. To his surprise, the one that ended Rick's life before he even really got to Snowdin was Sans, who judging by how Frisk pieced their stories together to add to what he knew about the Underground, led him to believe that Sans simply stopped caring and did his duty at that point.

Luckily, he had his turn to tell stories of the Underground too and boy did he have material to go with. There was no way he could tell them everything at once. And the things he had to tell were uplifting for everyone's mood. The gloom that came with several elephants in the room that were invoked before, quickly made way for excitement and curiosity. "* So what did you do then?", Tess pressed.

"* Well I did several things, but whatever you say or do, no matter how hard you try to be mean, Papyrus always finds a way to be flattered by it and take it as something positive. I just went back to flirting with him."

"* **Flirting**?" From the expression on her face and the tone of her voice, he now really had her attention.

"* Yes, I always did that when nothing else worked. You can get out of any encounter just by flirting. If you just flirt with people, they either get flattered and open up to you, or they're startled and surprised for long enough that you can follow up with something else. And then we went on a date and he had this weird costume with basketballs and a hat and then he was hiding spaghetti under..." When he was very insistently tipped on the shoulder by Lynn, the other girl, he turned around to see Brad's Dad come over to tell them that it was time. He wasn't wrong, the grass was getting colder and the sky was filled with the pink-purple light of a setting sun, which they couldn't even see because it was already behind the trees. When they came back to the tables though, he realised that Mom was really tired out and relieved that this was finally over. Once they were back home and on their own again, he asked her whether she enjoyed it. Of course she said yes, but he could tell her insincerity and refused to go back on his word. He loved the afternoon and so did all the others, a nice memory of catching up on the childhood they didn't have that he was going to erase, leaving only himself to remember it. No matter how he would regret it, no matter how the others wouldn't like this day disappearing, Mom came first. Always.

* * *

Feeling the weight that the impact of his choices put on him, it filled Frisk with DETERMINATION. With the cold of Snowdin's snow beneath his shoes and the breeze coming from the river, he looked back up to closely read Mom's face as he asked her. They went on this trip and she didn't end up liking it, so there was no point in repeating that. He just took back her phone and declined to Rick. "* I'm sorry, it really was a lot of stuff happening yesterday. Maybe another time." As expected of his otherwise very enthusiastic new friend, it took him a few seconds to accept that they weren't coming, but he eventually did and said goodbye. He gave her the phone back. "* If you don't want to go, neither do I." What next happened, he didn't expect. Mom bent down, held him close and nuzzled the top of his head. He was startled by this gesture but he was thankful for it. He tried to speak up while it was still happening, but he caught himself thinking through what would happen even if he did. If he asked her why, at worst, she would take it as him rejecting her. At best, she wouldn't even know why.

They went back home, where they really wouldn't do much. Mom made pie yet again, while Frisk went into 'his' room. The room all the other children were supposed to be living in at some point, and thought about the day that never happened.

When the recollection of these grim events were going to start, he had for a moment forgotten that he was the only one who's journey through the Underground didn't quickly end in a fatal way. Even in his own case, it was only under particular circumstances that they didn't kill him, namely that he didn't let them, because strictly speaking not fighting or killing him was an act of treason. Dad had ordered it. No matter how little anyone wanted to do it, Dad himself even less so than anyone else, everyone who didn't at least try was putting themselves in danger. Again, this was most the case with him. He had no choice and with how Frisk knew how Monsters' magic was affected by intent, he knew that if Dad had in the least bit really wanted to hurt or even kill him, he could have done that with the smallest part of a single attack, yet he didn't. His words called for bloody murder, but his actions didn't. He only even summoned his weapon and started a fight, like everyone else, because he had no choice. No-one had. This was why he forgave him. This was why he forgave them all.

Except Muffet of course, she just wanted to enrich herself, so she was beyond redemption.

The reason why he and the others were more ready to talk about things like that than normal people probably would, was because there were a few things they all knew just from context and circumstance. That hole high up on Mt Ebott could only be reached through some pretty dangerous climbing. And he knew the story. Everyone knew it. They all had come from Aberdeen. A terrible place to which no sane person would willingly send a boy or girl. At least not a well-meaning person. The only reason someone might go up there, was to be absolutely sure that they could go through with it. Life in the orphanage was without a future and not worth living. Not even for a child. And everyone knew the stories of how people who climbed that mountain never came back. The children even told each other of how some children made for it in the past and were never found. Even if someone had looked for them and found the hole that led to the ruins, they would probably just have declared them dead and called it a day, never asking why one child after the other is going there or trying to end their lives in other ways. They knew the stories, all of them. Each one of which was one of the children that came down here before them. The seven of them and Chara **were** the stories. They also knew the one of the boy that came before them. The one that led to that place's creation.

Sansibar Aberdeen, the boy who lost his parents and found no home elsewhere, so he made for the mountain and was never seen again. Even when extensively searched later on. It was repeated again and again to keep everyone knowing - no - to keep everyone accepting the excuse for that place's existence. But he couldn't help but wonder, if Sansibar just disappeared - possibly the same way Frisk and all the others had, why was there no mention of him in the Underground? Maybe stories of a human coming down here a hundred years ago? Monsters meeting him and learning about what humans were like? But most Monsters - even the ones that lived long - didn't seem like they had seen a human before Chara or heard of one. And they never mentioned one. He figured the first human to fall down here would have been a big deal, and the same went for if there had been a Monster that was seen just leaving straight through the barrier.

Granted, the most likely thing was that he simply died on the mountain and the search parties in the story about him were simply exaggerated and weren't large or extensive enough to find his body. Still, he couldn't help but think. If he disappeared, it would make sense if he 'disappeared' here. Maybe he had to look for Monsters that knew stuff about the surface and press them on where they knew it from. But then again, Alphys did too, she just knew from whatever was thrown away. If Sansibar had been in the Underground, what would have happened? There had been no declaration of war on humans yet, only stories telling about how scary and almighty they were. He would probably have stood out a lot and all Monsters would either be terrified of going even near him or stumbling over themselves with curiosity. So he would have drawn a lot of attention and caused a ruckus. He would have been very polarizing simply by circumstance. Even if he kept himself hidden to most Monsters, if he was a polarizing person, he was still bound to find some people that he would get really friendly with. If he had Monster friends, how would he hide, what would their interactions lead to? What could they leave behind. He was good at this, he had to think through the consequences. They would probably want to take notes, create memorabilia, somehow give records of his presence some sort of longevity.

But just by sitting in his room and thinking he couldn't figure out the answer. He would probably look into that once he had a better idea of what to look for. He did ask Mom, when they were eating. She wouldn't have liked if he brought up dark stories like this one, so he just used dates. He named the exact year the story of Sansibar supposedly took place and of course she didn't have an answer to that. There was no human that came here a hundred years ago. Only afterwards, it occurred to her to tell him that Dad had put in place a new royal scientist who in the particular year that Frisk named, had become a new lab assistant, but she didn't know the name because she didn't bother with these kinds of things unless she had to. And she didn't have to. So the most important bit of her answer was just to ask 'his father' if he was so eager to know. Which he did before going to bed. It appeared that Dad was sitting outside under the stars and enjoying a cup of tea, so he was free to talk. But the answer he got from him gave him one new, strange and far-fetched idea. Even that suspicion didn't really make sense. Or did it? Sansibar would be polarizing, so among other things, he would make friends. If he made friends, they would probably not spell out his entire name every time they said it. They would shorten it down. They would call him...

* * *

" Sans? Are you even listening? Hmm - fast asleep. Well, that's what I always keep a megaphone around for."

" Uh, D-Doc don't you think this is a bit much?"

" Much? No of course not, it's perfectly appropriate. I just need to..okay. Now. **SANS!** "

" woah! doc, why?"

" You obviously weren't hearing me, so I had to try getting a bit louder. Good morning and welcome back. That being said, next up, the Builvers. Builvers are humanoid Monsters that largely share habitats with the eponymous beavers. Hence their outwardly similar anatomy. They are hard-working people, very down-to-earth. While their distant ancestors only built huts, longhouses, bridges, wells and of course dams, the craft of builvers developed as that of others did and they always were a clear step ahead of everyone else. They are experts on farming and construction and their basic magic has evolved to serve the latter. They summon spectral construction equipment, the forms of which they can even adopt from blueprints that they read and they can form and shape wood. Where you and I need to hammer in nails to connect pieces of wood, a builver can just fuse them together.

As for other materials, I think you can guess that they have little trouble consciously learning how to shape and process other materials as well. Because most of their working processes are based on magic in their application, they can also perform every task at an incomparably higher level of precision, which allows them to construct much, much faster than anyone else could. Whatever anyone else tells you, if you want a building built quickly and yet stable, you go to the builvers. Construction has been their bread and butter nonstop for thousands of years. Any crew that is remotely on par with them is at least led and coordinated by builvers. No discussion, no comparable competition."


	21. the first of nine

A Doctor's Duty

Chapter 10

the first of nine

* * *

He was woken up, as usual, by Papyrus' impatient calls for him not to sleep so late. "SANS! THERE WAS AN EXCUSE YESTERDAY, THERE ISN'T ONE NOW." Really now? It was only...ten o'clock. Okay, maybe he had a point. Sans didn't have much of a feeling for that at the moment, because he had spent the last evening running multiple hot dog stands again, most importantly of course a new one he set up just outside the Underground. Followed by asking the builvers to make a few little additions to what they had planned for the skeletons. On extremely short notice, he ended the day with wordlessly taking Alphys back outside the lab. She kept asking an extremely easy to answer question that he couldn't bother with at the time, because that would have led to things going on for quite a bit longer. Now was a new day, maybe they'd move on with that today. "THERE IS NO NEED TO SLACK OFF. IN THREE DAYS, THEORY CLASSES START AND I NEED TO PREPARE MYSELF."

Sans shrugged. "* fine by me." Papyrus didn't seem like in a mood in which arguing was any good. "* early trip to the city never hurt." The view outside was weird. Much, much more workers had come together and out here, like a whole army of them. Builvers, brainlizards, boss monsters, Woshua and a crew of similar walking cleaning utensils, manwolves, fuzzlybears, there were even a few Temmies overlooking it. Again or still outside on his little chair and table sat Asgore, sipping from his morning tea and only briefly turning around to greet them before he went back to watching the Monsters down there laying out and in some few places even starting to dig to make space for future pavements, which with boss monsters just magically shifting the earth aside was much easier and faster than a human would imagine. This went for all the tasks, but overall, that was mostly because humans had no such thing as magic.

Once in the train, on the next stop a human woman and her kid got in and sat in the aisle next to the ones the skeletons occupied. At first, the guy just sneaked an occasional glance at the two of them. After a while, he got up and sat right next to Papyrus, causing his Mom to look pretty mad but not say anything. "* Are you an undead?"

What? Papyrus looked back down at him with similar confusion. "WAIT...I BEG YOUR PARDON?"

"* An undead, like..." His mother was already trying to pull him away and apologize for the inconvenience. She came to a stop when Sans gestured to her that it was okay. "* ...like a dead body and then an evil sorcerer comes and raises you as a zombie or a skeleton."

Well Sans didn't know about evil but... "HOW RIDICULOUS. SANS AND I ARE PERFECTLY ALIVE MONSTERS LIKE EVERYONE ELSE." He raised a finger so as to draw attention to the point he was going to make. "I AM PRETTY CERTAIN THOUGH THAT THERE MUST BE SOME RELATION. MAYBE WE HAVE A COMMON ANCESTOR."

"* papy, i don't think that..."

"NO NEED FOR DEFLECTIONS, BROTHER, YOU CAN'T DENY THE OBVIOUS SIMILARITIES BETWEEN US AND HUMANS." He ran his mittens along his skull. "THE ROUND-ISH SKULLS, THE SIMILAR TEETH, AND DON'T FORGET THE SKELETON FLAGS." When Papyrus described what he meant, they explained to him, as Sans could expect, that this was a popular go-to flag for pirates. "WOWIE, IF THE TRADERS JUST GIVE THEM ALL THESE GOODS, HUMAN PIRATES MUST BE REALLY GOOD AT PERSUASION."

He was embarrassing himself. Not that Sans didn't find it funny, but it was probably better if he didn't let him get too wrong ideas. "* no, they kill the traders if they don't. and sometimes they just kill them and take the goods. the bones are because that's what's left behind when humans were dead for a while."

You could tell from the motions of his skull that one thing after the other was dawning on the taller skeleton. "OH...OH GOODNESS, I HAD AN ANNOUNCEMENT OF MASS SLAUGHTER HUNG UP ON MY WALL THE WHOLE TIME. WHAT MUST THE HUMAN HAVE THOUGHT?"

Sans shook his head. "* i'm pretty sure he didn't think you were gonna slaughter him."

"PHEW. THAT'S A RELIEF." After that, the two humans took their leave. Undead, huh. It was probably better if Sans looked into that later. Not that what the guy said didn't ring a distant bell, but if this was that big a deal on the surface now, who knew what that meant. When they did find a large book store, it was a bit disappointing though. The startled shop assistant couldn't find any book of what Papyrus described, at least anything that they had there at the moment. Back on the sunstruck plaza, Papyrus wouldn't give up. "ON TO THE NEXT ONE THEN." Their lack of a connection to the internet was a bit of a bother. He was gonna have to change that. They had to ask their way every time and the humans were of course visibly surprised and a little scared of walking and talking skeletons wandering up to them to ask for the way to the next book shop. Sometimes they came across small groups of grown humans with dust masks who's eyes looked a lot like Frisk's and who shared his yellow skin tone. They would ask the skeletons if they could take a picture of them with very broken and hard-to-discern language.

Sans' phone rang. Speak of the devil, it was the very kid he just thought about. "* yeah?"

"* Sans? I wanted to ask, could we talk some time? Just the two of us?" Ominous, but hey, they hadn't done much together for a while.

"* sure, whenever's good for ya."

"WHO IS IT?"

Sans covered the phone. "* it's the kid."

"HUMAN?"He really had to get used to calling him by his name. Or something else. The people around would occasionally look already, but they were looking all the more, now that Papyrus was loudly calling for a 'human', which could mean anyone from most people around them. Papyrus had grabbed the phone from Sans' hand. "WE JUST HAVE TO GO TO SOME OTHER PLACE ALL TOGETHER SOON. MAYBE SOMETHING WITH MORE NATURE...AND LESS GIANT WATER LIZARDS."

Sans came a bit closer to add in: "* definitely less of those."

Even after their little interruption, they sooner or later couldn't avoid the conclusion that there wasn't something like what Papyrus was looking for, at least not immediately available. Disappointed at their fruitless search, they went back to the first one to order the one they didn't have in store. That way it was perhaps not completely fruitless. Even when they came back home, it was still early afternoon. Plenty of time to do stuff and Papyrus was satisfied in regards to Sans not 'slacking off'. Time to visit the lab then. When he showed up, Alphys was - as usual - not doing much productive. At least that was what it looked like. Multiple tabs of anime forums, anime platforms, news websites and that one place Papyrus didn't like. "* Ah, hello Sans." She quickly typed to them that Sans had come by, which was met with the kinda reactions from others that Sans was going for.

"* 'The skeleton's back', what does she mean?"

"* It means he's going to mess up the thread with punposting again unless she goes."

"* It's an online melanoma."

She closed it before any more came. "* sorry 'bout yesterday. it's been a long day."

Alphys started grinning and her eyes narrowed. "* Superhero stuff?"

He just shrugged while they headed over to the elevator. "* if you wanna call it that."

She went on to talk about her work while they still went to the assembly machine. "* What I have is a loose model that's built to be evenly scaled down in stability of all parts compared to what I really have. I only really wanted you to test it to see where I need to make corrections."

"* yeah, heard that last time. now's the time." When they arrived, the powered-up computer displayed the model she had put together.

"* I wanted to make one to have something to show, but it won't work. See?" She smashed the big red button that started the production. "* Nothing happens. I'm starting to worry."

He just gestured her to stop. "* no need to worry." He stepped forward to hit the button again. "* rise, my creation." When it was done, the machinery started working as it always did. No problem whatsoever.

And it took the lizard a few seconds of staring at it and him. "* But it didn't...wait! You said that same thing last time!"

She was getting it. "* yep."

"* So it's voice activated."

"* all the major stuff here is." It took a bit longer and was a bit louder than with the little Papyruses, but when it was done, the tools and the protective units retracted, the platform was left with a little tricycle. Inconspicuous and not out of place for someone his size to bring around whatsoever. Exactly how he wanted it. If she could make something like this but capable of lasting through some real speed, that would make some moments of getting around extra easy. At least when he was being watched. "* thanks. we're done here for now. next step is on me, right?" She smiled at him with a bit more confidence than she had recently. She was probably getting more comfortable with the place and would get more comfortable, each time they came here. But after they got back up, before he left to test it, he turned around. "* say, that guy that undyne's racing, the other fish. what's his name again?"

She seemed to wonder why he would ask, but she just gave him the name. "* Krushe, I think."

"* hm, thanks. see ya tomorrow." With this he left. Krushe, the tiderider. Couldn't be so hard to find. This would probably make for some more fun. He quickly arrived at the border of the village. Not the actual village but the end of where all the Monsters were working and made for the highway. If he drove precisely at the corner, he wouldn't have to worry about cars most of the time. In the moment, what was important was to get this thing trashed, so Alphys could figure out what to improve on. With it standing at the side of the road, he looked around one more time and reassured himself that he was ready for this. If anything went haywire, he could always teleport into the sky and teleport himself flipped to regulate his momentum should that be necessary. He needed one more breath before he would get down to doing it, but once he was in the seat, there was no backing out of it.

Sheesh, this was really getting to him. The reason for that was that once he would be at the higher speeds, sure it would be way easy to avoid mistakes, he could react as fast as he could move after all, but if he made a single one, he was dust. He stepped into the pedals and moved. First slowly, then he moved onto the actual pavement and got faster and faster. This was the time to get going. Once he was way out of the village, he turned on his G-Nerator to power himself up more and used his power converter to convert as much of his power as he could into speed. He wouldn't need much power to cast big magic attacks, so there was a lot more physical speed to be had for him. At first, there was a vehicle that passed him after all. Then he was so fast that any car driving along here probably wouldn't catch up or overtake him. This proved to be wrong when a speeder rushed past him in his moderate speed and marked the moment where he would really see how much this thing had in it.

More acceleration only evened out his speed with his target but it was still barely in sight and already entering the next village, where it came to slow down. It turned out this wasn't a proper roadway and that the roads between most of these villages were probably too short to test it, at least as carefully as he was. He would have to look for something better. After moving back to a safe distance, he started teleporting around to scout the area. What he was looking for, was something that warranted long roadways. Like a far-off town or something that had many directions to approach it from. But it didn't take looking for maps and the like to figure it out. The airport. Along the roads that led to the airport from their first day up here, he found one that was indeed long enough. And much more self-assured, he sped up from the start to keep up with the passing cars.

And it did go a lot better. As long as the road was even, he could get way faster without anything happening than he first thought. The tires were steaming a bit after some of the curves in small forest areas, but otherwise he could outrun even the more stylish looking cars, leaving them with baffled faces as they saw a little guy in a tricycle rush past them and their expensive ride. Then he got to a few potholes and his ride came to a sudden but very unspectacular stop. The tires simply gave in and left him scratching on the ground with what was left of the wheels. This made it very clear. When Alphys was going to make the version with the super durable materials, she would have to do something about the tires so they didn't wear out and get torn so quickly.

Either way, it was still afternoon and there was plenty of time to buy and sell a new load of hotdogs. His stands had been empty for way too long. With how the entire area around Farfoot village was overcrowded with hard-working and probably occasionally hungry monsters, he probably would have to either resettle one of his stands or set up yet again another one, all of which he would have to run at the same time. Fine by him, if he got to sell more hot animals, that also meant more money. He was lucky this time though. When two builvers came by his stand outside the Underground, they asked him why he didn't have one somewhere where there were people working and when he explained to them that he would have had to set up a new one, which he didn't have the time for at the moment, they just headed off and quickly made one themselves. They must have been done within minutes and it was a stand of wooden boards. The wood was different from the type that Sans bought and used, but other than that, it's shape was near identical to his outposts. These guys really knew what they were doing.

When he saw them sweating whenever he was there to greet customers, he figured it was probably better if he got set up to sell water from the city as well as mustard and ketchup too. If he had given him a chance, Asgore would probably have told him to relax and not worry about money so much. But Sans was worried more about money than he otherwise would be. Living on the surface was probably a lot more expensive, so both him and Papyrus would have to get set up to get jobs. Real jobs. Surface jobs. Well somehow it would work out. If Papy put his mind to something, he was sure to be good at it. Probably something other than cooking. Or generally making food.

Operating on two more stands - the same guys that made him one more, made him another one - and ones that had so many hungry mouths around at that, proved even more profitable than he thought. Before it was really evening yet, he already ran out of ware to sell, and all he could do was to promise to get more for the next day. Well, it couldn't be helped. They didn't expect hotdogs on that day anyway. Well as far as the day was concerned, work was mostly done. After running a few errands to make sure he was delivered the goods to sell on the next day, it was time for some fun. Krushe the tiderider couldn't have been hard to find. If he came along on that trip, it wasn't very likely that he was too far off. But if he got Undyne to be so mad, it was pretty clear that she didn't know him from before. He also hadn't met him himself, so he didn't live in Waterfall. Monsters like Undyne and Krushe always lived near bodies of water that they could comfortably swim in, so anything like Snowdin or Hotland was out of the question.

Southwest and deeper than Waterfall though, in Darkmarsh, there was a lake, bigger than the one in Waterfall. This musta been it. It met all the requirements. It wasn't too far away, it had water and it wasn't Waterfall. The only normal way to get there would have been to head all the way to New home, take one of the cornered streets to an exit to a narrow series of caves until he got back to the open area that would eventually, after a long road, lead him there. It wasn't far off, but it wasn't really close either. He on the other hand could just stand on the upper plateaus of Water fall, all the way on the edge, where it was just a high cliff that led way down to a little dark pine forest. Darkmarsh, even all the way here, was barely lit. Street lights with faintly glowing light crystals were set up along the road through the woods. Here and there, the woods were surrounded by rock formations, some of which were like pillars that stretched all the way to the top. Others reached just as far up, but were solid rock and more like outright lack of open space rather than pillars within an open area.

When he was reaching the end of the woods, pacing there at differing speeds, it finally got a bit brighter. Or it would have if it weren't already evening. Through an opening in the ceiling streamed a constant flow of water that refilled the lake, and through rivers in all directions, the water was led away. It didn't outright lead to the surface, at least not directly to land on it, and even if someone could somehow climb up there despite being met with the full force that kept the waterbed filled, the barrier would still have been in the way. A few wooden houses were built at different ends of the lake, most of the people of Darkmarsh didn't live here but in the actual 'marsh' part of Darkmarsh. Outiside one house though, there was an old fisherman, a bear that was sitting on a bent chair, lazily dangling his fishing pole. "* hey there."

The fisherman just raised his hat with a grunt. "* i'm looking for a krushe. tall blue guy, looks like a fish. long red hair. big teeth. real big teeth. i'm serious, you can't miss'em. they're huge."

The bear nodded, still nodding while speaking up. "* Oh yeah, we got one of those. See that little house over there?" He pointed way to the other side. A little red house, shaped like an angry looking fish, lay there with wooden boardwalk leading from it's porch into the water. Yep, that looked like it was exactly what he was looking for. He was pretty sure he even saw this house in the distance at one point or another in the past, he only never saw who it belonged to. They musta built the houses for watermen and water nymphs alike. Sure it was red, and shaped a bit differently, but the exterior fish theme was exactly the same. "* Really sporty guy, fishes too, but without a pole. He just jumps into the water and fetches 'em. I should try that too some time."

Sans responded to the helpful answer with a thumbs up. "* yeah, that sounds about right. and you really should. ya know, try catchin' em with your - bear - hands." He pointed at him with a grin.

The fisherman fixated him and slowly, his eyes narrowed, until he pointed back at Sans. "* Good one. Old but good." And he was smiling, too.

At the time, the inside of the lake was pitch black. All you could see was the grey-blue gravel that made up the extent of what Monsters knew as a 'beach' until two days ago, only visible in and getting the colour it appeared to have from the light of the crystals that lined up the border of the lake. When he arrived at the house, the lights were on, but from the sounds of it, nobody was there. "* hello?" Maybe he was out. Or in the water. But he wouldn't keep the lights on if he wasn't at home, would he? "* anyone there?" After a while, he saw something. It was barely visible in the dark, but the water was shifting into an arrow in his direction, as if something was moving in his direction really fast. When it happened, Sans quickly dodged to the side. Out of the arrow on the surface of the lake broke the she shape of the guy he was looking for and in one single leap, he jumped something between five and ten metres out of the water and landed on the ground graciously with a roll.

"* Who're you?" Lengthy body, strong build, long and full red hair, two yellow eyes, yep, that was him. "* Are you related to Papyrus?"

"* yep. you're really looking forward to this thing aren'tcha?"

He must have caught him off guard. "* What are you walking about?" The face he was making suited his question. It was like he really didn't know.

Sans kept playing it cool. He shrugged, put his arms up and went on. "* ya know, that rematch of the race from two days ago? with undyne? i'm seeing you're practising for it right now."

Suddenly, he was all relaxed again, when he realized what Sans was on about. "* Oh you mean..." He laughed. "* No, I'm out swimming at this time every day. I might have even forgotten about it if you didn't come here." He had only seen the guy from the distance, but even like this, he noticed he was much more relaxed and much more - humble? His provocative self-confidence was gone.

Sans tilted his head. "* really now? i'd think undyne would be pretty disappointed."

He really didn't know what Sans was getting to, did he? "* Really?"

"* really. she can't sleep, practising swimming every day now and she's worked up about this all day every day. you musta really gotten her head spinning."

Hearing this, Krushe was shocked. You could say he was - Krushed. He was relaxed before, but any stance he previously had was gone, he was unknowingly backing off with his hands open. "* Woah, woah, really? I didn't think..." He scratched his head and sighed through his teeth. "* ...I'm...okay. Didn't see that coming. I was only really teasing her out of fun. It really started with me picking up a cue that she was easy to provoke and I was really only going from there. But now...oh wow." He was blushing and getting nervous to a degree he couldn'ta concealed if he wanted to. He did catch himself from his little episode of mumbling things. "* I'm...okay okay. Thanks for telling me. Now I really need to take this seriously after all, don't I?"

Sans smiled and nodded. "* probably better if you do. but don't tell undyne i was here, she'd get pretty mad. and you know how mad she can get."

"* Thank you - uh."

"* sans. sans the skeleton."

"* Thank you, Sans. I'll really get behind this now. I promise. Both of it. Race and date." His resolve was back.

"* you go ahead and do that."

He was calling after Sans, even though he had already turned around to leave. "* Was a pretty far way, all the way down here. Can I offer you a drink - or."

He had no idea. "* save the drinks for the lady."

Krushe, still looking a bit unsure, winked back at him. "* Gotcha loud and clear."

Once he was done inducing a Krushe and out of sight, he made for Snowdin. He was going to just go home and call it a day for good, but his phone rang again. "* Hello?" It was Frisk again. "* Would now be a good time?"

"* sure, tori's house?"

"* I'd like the woods in front of the ruins more. Just a bit north from where we first met." It sounded like he was outside already. It also sounded like he didn't want Sans to think it was important, but he could very well tell that it was, just from the tone of his voice.

When he was past the bridge to the ruins, he turned around to wade through the snow between the much brighter green pine trees than the ones in Darkmarsh. After walking quite a piece - it almost seemed like Frisk didn't want Tori to be present for this, even though she was a bit overprotective he arrived. "* Sans?" He stood there, alone and inept, knee-deep in the snow, still wearing nothing but his usual pants and sweater. "* Do you have time?"

"* all the time you need." And he was even ready for a fight if that was what was coming for some strange reason. He didn't look like this was it though. He looked scared, anxious. Unsure about whatever was on his mind. "* that sound in your voice. it's the sound of someone who really wants to talk about something, but doesn't know how to start. go ahead. there's no wrong way."

It took the kid another breath before he finally got to the point. "* When we first came to the surface, and we were sitting at Howard's, talking about what had happened while all Monsters were in the Underground, they knew immediately where I was from, as soon they heard of Mt. Ebott. And as soon as the name 'Aberdeen' was mentioned, you acted very strange." He didn't like where this was going. He was going to interrupt him, but for what reason? "* They're not wrong, that's where I was from. It's a bad place. A really bad place. They always justified that place even existing and us not getting sent somewhere else with a story and with how it's a staple of human cruelty." Human cruelty. Sure, why not run with that? "* The story of Sansibar Aberdeen. He lost his home and his family to an accident." A house fire, and it wasn't an accident. Probably not. "* Wherever he went, he was turned and cast away, until he tried making himself a home on the mountain the people that lived there avoided." How specific parts of the story were omitted. It was almost funny. Almost. Nobody was laughing. Not even him.

"* And then he disappeared. No-one found him. All children that fell to the Underground left behind something, and as far as I can tell, he didn't. Maybe because so much time passed. I don't really believe it, but...it supposedly happened all in nineteen-oh-three. I wouldn't ask you about this if there was nothing, but I asked Dad" He shrugged together and put up his arms in defense. Weird, Sans didn't do anything to provoke this. "* Look I didn't ask him about what specifically, I just asked him if anything happened that particular year."

Sans gestured him to calm down. At first, he was afraid he was gonna do something to him. Sure, he wasn't all that far off. It took Sans a conscious effort, not to inadvertently turn on his blue shining G-Nerator, but he hadn't done anything to deserve something bad to happen to him. Not any more. "* so what about it?" Of course he knew 'what about it'.

"* It's you. He said that that was the year you appeared and became a new lab assistant. You could have appeared any year for all that would matter, but it was the exact same one. I can't help but think what if there were nine children that fell into the Underground? What if he was real, and the reason he disappeared was because he came here? It's just very unlikely that...Sansibar? Is it you? Is that what 'Sans' stands for? But you're a Monster, right? How?"

He put his hands back in his pockets and pretended to be relaxed. "* i think you've got the wrong guy here. i'm just some skeleton who lives in snowdin."

"* Sans you can't believe this is just a coincidence, right? You've got to know something about him. Anything."

He was already walking away. The light in his pupils was fading. "* If anyone even bothered to look for him, maybe they just weren't looking hard enough." The kid was still calling and asking him to stop, but he just went on back home. As if it wasn't enough that someone was abusing kids on a broad scale in his name, he certainly didn't need this one snooping around about it. He even would had talked, but that required revealing everything he knew that the kid had done. Sometimes, the past was just better left alone.

"SANS? SANS, WHAT'S WRONG?" He knew that Papy was worried, but he didn't care at the moment. He went up the stairs, back to his room, locked himself away and went straight to bed without a single word.


	22. Fall of the first Child

A Doctor's Duty

Chapter 11

Fall of the first Child

* * *

He didn't know how it happened. It just did. Walls of crackling flames were almost all he could see when looking inside. He cried out for his Mommy and Daddy, repeatedly and could feel his own voice shaking so strongly every time it was wearing him out, yet he pushed himself to keep going. Again and again, while he stumbled inside and tried to maneuver around burning furniture on his way inside. They must have been upstairs, but the ceiling over the staircase had already collapsed by the time he arrived, and what wasn't impassible was covered in flames, so he couldn't head upstairs to look. All the inside walls were torn in circular shapes, and as he banged against the wall, screaming over and over for his parents, he heard steps. All that came up to him was some bearded man with a uniform with two rows of buttons and a pointy helmet that bore the sign of the firefighters. Hoping to get to the kitchen to try and look for his parents there, he screamed at the man to let him go, but soon he wasn't just pulling at his arm, but grabbing his body and lifting it up to carry and place him, eyes covered in tears, on the stairs. "No! I have to..." He was about to get up the moment he was let go to rush back in, but another one held him in place, while the just-arrived wagons were prepared to extinguish the flames. He was struggling to get loose. He felt torn all over, had a burning urge to struggle free and run, but at the same time felt crushed into nothing, seeing all of his life burnt to a crisp.

"Will someone shut that human up already?", a man further into the road called. He was tall and wore a black smoking with a black top hat, curled locks hanging down both sides of his head and pointy ears. He had gone back to his chariot to light his cigarette and was back, stepping in place with his foot. "He annoys me." While he was still whimpering, in part out of fear, in part out despair, the man came closer to him and threw him a piercing gaze that appeared all the more contemptuous with his thick eyebrows. "You should be thankful that you're even alive, boy." When the man walked away, he could still hear him mumbling to himself. "I still think this was a mistake.". Even when he was gone, he kept pulling, trying to get away. Crying out that maybe he could do something, maybe they needed help, but all the more, it felt like his spine was crushed to dust when he saw the men carry and set up to be brought down what was left of his mother out of the no longer burning window.

He eventually collapsed, burying his face in the cloth they covered her with, with no hope or idea what to do. He couldn't live without Mommy and Daddy, how would he? They couldn't be gone, this couldn't be real. He begged, prayed to god that this was just a nightmare, but instead of a sign or him waking up, what followed was the firefighters bringing down the other body, while one of them grabbed him by both arms. "Listen! Listen, little one, hold still!" How could he hold still, how could he do anything? "I need to know, do you have any family? Any uncles, aunts? Grandparents?" He wasn't growing more silent, but he didn't completely ignore the stranger either. He shook his head. There was no family. Not without them. There was no life without them. They were just a little rootless family that came here to start a new life and took a far-out house because it was cheap. That wasn't even it. Without Mommy and Daddy, why would he want to live, even if he could?

When the fireman was done asking, and the fires were put out, they headed off and left him behind on the cold, hard pavement with a blackened ruin he once called his home. Everything was blackened and greyed out, all that he touched was brittle. Trembling all over and barely capable of seeing something through his watery eyes, he walked upstairs, stepped into the ruins of what used to be his room and lay on the bed where he stayed for god knew how long, shivering, waiting for this to end, however it would. He must have been lying there for hours. And whenever he listened closely, he heard something. It was very faint, and it came from nowhere, but it was still there. Three music tones, as if played by a piano of a music box, arranged in a sinister-sounding four-note melody. It was sometimes set down by half a note. He soon concentrated, and started focusing on it. It calmed him down, allowed him to think. It urged him on to live. His parents wouldn't want him to die like this. He had to get up and scratch together whatever there was left. Which was nothing. Not even the water was running any more.

Eventually he set out with Daddy's pocket watch, a bottle of water that survived the fire,a pear, what little crumbles of a few cookies he could salvage and the half of a line cloth that wasn't splintering apart. This was it. This was all he had. Before he was even done, the owner and a man from the insurance company came and kicked him out. He had nowhere specific to go, so what he did for the time, was to look for a place to sleep until he did. The area was still filled with the autumn fog and the rocky streets and houses reached as far as the eye could see. He went to the next house, which was somehow sheltered and unaffected by whatever caused the fire and rang the bell. The door was opened by a middle-aged woman in a comfortable home dress that only made him miss his home even more. "Hello? I'm from next door. The house..." He was trembling too much to go on against the woman's nervous voice shouting for her husband.

"Aaron!"

When he came by, he just lifted his hand, gestured him to go away and close the door. He didn't even react to what happened. What circled through his mind was the same one question that kept repeating itself again and again and again. Every time he went to the next house, for at least an hour on end, each time getting told off and asked not to bother them in variously direct ways. Why? Why could no-one spare him a place to sleep? He wasn't even asking to be fed, just a place to be sheltered from the cold of the night for maybe a day or two. He even had retrieved a few hundred pounds at home. He could have paid for his stay if they wanted. It was something someone said houses over houses down the line that gave him a first idea. For a moment, the woman of the house was asking her husband if sending him away was the right thing, and he pointed straight at him. "Absolutely not. Look at his ears. He's a human! Now bugger off, you filthy pest!" He knew better than to stay as close to the door frame as he was, as the man was already raising a leg to threaten to kick him down the stairs to the entrance door.

It was obvious thinking back later, but at the time, he didn't understand what was going on. He was in a ghetto full of Elves. He had only read such wonderful things about them. How they were open and welcoming and only undeservedly and for no reason faced persecution from the other countries that kicked them out in the past. It must have been a coincidence. He must have just stopped by the few families that weren't open and welcoming. But the hours passed and the sun went down and still, the increasingly exhausted boy could not find a single family that could spare him a room. Even allowing him to sleep on the floor in a cellar, under an outside roof or in one of their little sheds would have done. But the faintest bit of help was asking too much. He was treated as an enemy by every neighbour and fellow citizen he looked to for help.

Eventually, when it dark enough and the clouds that rained down on the walkways made this more so than otherwise, he looked for a less lit house. There was no way around it, he had to sleep outside. He had to get through the night. Somehow. There was one that had a small lawn with a tree on it. He kept an eye on the shadows behind the curtain, to catch an opportunity to sneak to the tree and sit down opposite of the house to hide behind the same tree as well as he could, wrapped in this torn blanket. The grassy ground was cold and wet, and the bark was uncomfortable against his back. All he could see was more houses and the silhouette of Mt. Ebott looming ahead, occasionally illuminated by the flashes of light that preceded the terrifying thunders. It was terrible, but it was all that was available. He just had to hope he could cry himself to sleep in spite of all of it. He already missed Mommy's soothing touch and Daddy's encouraging words so much. What was he even doing, trying to survive? He wanted it to end, he wanted this all to end so badly. There was no way this was really happening.

Over the snuffling of his running nose, the all-encompassing stream of rain trickling the ground and the the trembling whimpers of his own voice, he almost overheard the sound of a revolver's release getting pulled, that was aimed straight at his head and mere inches away from it. Even here and now, in the dark of the night and the rain, the father of the house had not only spotted him but made the effort of coming out here to scare him away. "I am a very merciful person, so I am giving you a choice.", he began with a calm voice. "You do not own this property, human. Leave it immediately, with neither hesitation nor resistance, and I will spare your life." He looked back at the stranger and couldn't believe his words. "No-one would pursue me for ridding our community of a worthless slave child like you."

What choice did he have? Pick a fight with a grown man, armed and in a district full of people who would rush to his side if push came to shove? He grabbed all he had without saying anything and left for the road. When he was already one cross-way further away, the man was still standing outside, watching very intently to make sure he wouldn't come back. How did he even notice? Why was everyone so alarmed, almost like they were prepared to face a human child in need of a place to stay? There was no option he could take. He couldn't try to sit at the property of anyone, for fear of this happening again and him not getting spared next time. Even when he sat on the walkway, sooner or later, he would be asked by passing-by policemen to move. Sure, they were much more polite than the locals, but their intervention nonetheless deprived him of another option. He could linger neither on the pavement, nor on or too close to any of the properties around. But each time he looked inward on the road, sooner or later, the lines of the mountain sprung into his field of vision again.

At some point, when the last patrol had passed, he spent some time standing in place. Standing, so that he couldn't fall asleep and 'get caught' again. This time, when the lightning struck once again, he noticed something. The mountain wasn't just not covered in them, it had no buildings at all. It wasn't settled on. If he tried to find or make shelter there, maybe he had a chance of getting some time for himself, some time to recuperate. The journey even to it was strenuous. He was getting so tired, that he started losing balance several times. And he was sneezing worryingly often, lately. He hoped he wasn't developing a cold, not already. All he could do was to push on, if he was too torn inside, focus on the faint melody in his head.

One time, caught himself at the last moment before walking on a street, just when a chariot was coming through. He lost count of the roads he passed on his way, he only knew that so long as he kept going towards it, he would eventually reach it and ever so slowly, it did draw closer. The closer he came, the less frequently the roads were in use and he had long lost track of how far he had gone, how late it was or how long he had spent approaching it, he only felt some new energy when he was finally at the path that led up to the foot of the mountain. There were fields of grass to both sides, he passed by a sign he couldn't read and the open gate of a wide fence. He fought to spite his legs getting worn out when moving up the steep way up. On the foot of it, there was a wooden hut after all, so to be safe not to be disposed of here after all, he avoided settling down here and went right on to readjusting everything he had to carry it more easily. It was all the more cold when he had to take off the partly soaked rag of cloth he had on him and felt the cold wind and the rain right on his open lower legs.

It took some time to manage, but he eventually got all his belongings wrapped together and bound to his shoulder using the blanket. He snorted once more and shook his head to get himself back to being fully awake. The next part was what he was prepared for when his parents sent him to the scouts. He reminded himself of the routine and soon found one spot after the other to place his hands and feet and pull himself up. It wasn't long before the fear kicked in, but he couldn't afford to let that get the better of him. He just had to keep his goal in mind. He could tell from the distance that there was a small, open area further up. He just had to get there, and no road led to it. An endless struggle against the rocky surroundings, the weather, the people that would subject him to this, his own running nose and the moments of disgust at all the plants and small wildlife he touched when holding onto the wall, a struggle of intensity he couldn't imagine there would be another one. And it would never end. Whenever he thought the next step would be the one where the end would come into view, it turned out that it took more.

Any slip up, any wrong grip could have been death, and in overthinking his previous decisions over and over as he kept on, he had long considered himself dead, when finally, the wall further up started making way for the entrance of a cave. The relief almost loosened one of his hands for a moment. He stiffened the muscles of all of his joints one more time to allow for his final spurt up. With his hand on a flat surface, he grabbed around several times, to assure himself that he had something solid to hold on to, and several steps later, he finally pulled himself on the comparably softer surface of a little plateau above. The ground here was in some places covered in small stones and in some, sand and a few plants. When he was absolutely sure, that he was safe, all of a sudden, his spirit left him and he collapsed and fainted on the spot. He didn't dream, but when he woke up, he knew that this wasn't a nightmare and that he must have slept.

The sky was still covered in clouds, but it was visibly day. The roads were still visibly wet from last night, and he couldn't bare look directly down the mountain for too long. It made him dizzy. At least if it rained again, he wouldn't be hit by it here. Not as much as down there. But climbing back down there? He didn't have it in him. Even if he did and didn't find some place to stay, which seemed likely judging by past experiences, he would have to climb up here again. With his things still attached, he headed past two very little trees into the cave, maybe he could think better inside without the sight of last night's place. But the cave inside the mountain proved just as dangerous as it's entrance on it's outside. It was big, with a lot of space and no-one nearby to tell him to go away, but he couldn't help stare at the giant hole in the centre of it. It had to do for the moment. He couldn't go on like this, whatever path he would choose. He just carefully stepped around to sit against one of the outside walls and finally untied the constricting makeshift bag he was wearing to take out whatever he had to eat and drink.

He had to regain his strength before he could go on. Mommy would have said so. Mommy...At once, his hand grew loose, until the partly bitten-off pear fell to the ground as his lips trembled and his eyes grew more watery once again. He finally cut loose, no-one would hear him after all. Even if they did, no-one would care. His cries clang back and forth through the inside of the mountain. He didn't care if anyone heard him any more. He just wanted his parents back. What was he even doing? He was stuck up here, with maybe a day worth of food and water, barely any way of getting back down, since he only really had practise climbing up, and even if he did, he would just spend another day going from door to door getting rejected. He had to face it, he had neither the means to live, nor a reason to do so if he could. On all fours and leaving everything behind but dad's old watch that had long stopped, he just crawled forward, closer to the looming darkness. Yes, it terrified him, looking into it. He knew he shouldn't do this. But he just wanted this to end. He was only making himself miserable. The sorrow, the weakness, the hunger, it would never end, no matter how long he stretched it. He closed his eyes but found himself unable to stop crying. He got up on his feet and opened them. Still with the watch in his hand, he stretched out his arms. He could end it, here and now. Mommy, Daddy, wherever they were, he hoped he could follow them. No matter how badly God looked upon what he was about to do.

* * *

They were faint, it was pretty far up after all, but they were still faint. With his measuring instruments in hand, the Doctor stood absolutely still. He heard strange noises from above. It was hard to discern the nature of it. What was it? Who was it. "'ello? Is anyone up there?" Well without some means of making himself louder, asking again seemed pointless. If there was someone all the way up there, they couldn't hear him anyway. He looked over to all the equipment that he had installed, stands pointing several instruments upwards, along with screens and keyboards to allow him to operate it. Maybe he could use the impulse generator to emit sound instead. But recalibrating it to do that would take ages. By the time he was done, who or whatever was up there would already be gone.

He pulled a pen out of the pocket of his black robe and fetched some paper to note down time and date that this weird occurrence happened. But when he was focused on writing it down, he felt a small metal object crash against his skull with a massive force, which shook him completely, followed by a very disconcerting noise. It sounded...painful. Very painful. More painful than what he just experienced. He kept rubbing the back of his skull with one hand. He couldn't even bare to check what it was, but he had to. Even if he could avoid it, he had to know. "Oh goodness...oh by Asgrim's beard." When he looked up from the side of his skeletal hand, covering his eyes, blood smeared across the legs of one of his three-yard high instruments heralded the sight of a human child with it's body impaled on the central upwards spike of his impulse generator.

At once, the pain from above was only a minor thing, he held his skull with both his hands, the holes in them left his 'ears' open to hear. "Oh goodness, good gracious. What should I do, what should I do, what should I do!" He wailed to himself. He was on his own, there was no-one here for quite a stretch and even beyond that, there were only small scavengers and harmless resident Monsters. He could freely utter all his thoughts to process them better. "A human found here. Okay, think, I could...maybe it would be better if I just got him down there for a start." Carefully, he adjusted one of the legs of the tripod and under strong physical effort, eased it down in his direction until the child was low enough for him to tear off. When his hand was nearing the body, he could already see the faint glow from within. "Oh goodie, better not risk that." He fetched a pair of gloves. Direct skin contact when the soul was responding bore the risk of him taking it, which could only really lead to disaster. It used to be considered a sacrilege for a good reason.

He had to pull with all his might and at the risk of breaking it, stand on the dish of his instrument, until the human body finally moved and slid off the device that killed them with relative ease. Well - even if they weren't impaled, the fall would have been deadly either way. If this happened ever again, it was probably a good idea to fill this room so as to shift it's ground upwards and make it softer. Maybe then a human that fell down here would actually survive. With this finally done, the body lay on the solid purple stone of the hall, only illuminated by the lights he had himself set up. "Okay, so much for this. Now, think, Wingdings, think. Dead human in the Underground. Dead human in the Underground. What to do, what to do...human body down here, appears as if with soul. No leaving the Underground right now, Asgore was pretty clear, but if I bring him along anywhere, some Monster might get the wrong idea - yet worse, take the human's soul, leave the Underground and do god-knows-what." He shook his head up while he paced back and forth, as if he tried to shake an idea out of it. "We would never be able to leave if someone went up there and who knows - went on a murderous rampage. No, no, no, no, no, no. Out of the question. No-one can know. Wait...could Asgore know? Hnnn, hnn, not yet. Not until I know what to do. Besides, if I tell him what happened and where it happened, he'd know that I was here, that would mean explaining why I was researching ways to leave the Underground after being told not to find ways to leave the Underground. Argh this is depressing. Think..." He closed his eyesockets and took one deep breath. "There is one thing. But I'd have to do it before anyone knows. It won't work like this."

He went back to the exit to fetch his wagon. What he could do was leave the...oh right. "What I could do is to leave the equipment here and only transport him. Then I can use this..." He pulled out a large cloth from the wagon and laid it out next to the boy. "...to cover him. Then I just go 'delicate lab equipment' with a little extra grumpiness and all questions stop." He flinched. "Small but heavy." Lifting him up and placing him on the wagon was almost more strenuous than tearing him off his smeared machine..."The machine!" At once and now in panic, he rushed into the ruins with a few pieces of cloth to soak them in water and ran back just as quickly. "I can't leave those like this." He started cleaning off as much of the blood as he could and placed the machine in an unlit corner of the room, to increase the chances of the blood not getting seen. On second thought, saying everything he thought out loud didn't seem like that good an idea after all. Maybe it would have been better if there was someone he could trust to hear it. spending time cleaning gave him a few minutes to think about how to move forward. The primary goal was to abandon everything here and bring the human body to the lab. Everything else, even at the risk of getting caught doing research in the one aspect he was told to avoid, was secondary to bringing the human safely into the lab.

Now he was more or less set. The blood-soaked scrubs would have to make do in regards to separating the body from the outer cover. Where he was going, there wasn't so much light to allow to see it anyway. With the body covered, he made to travel through the ruins. One of the longest challenges would be the beginning. Namely getting the wagon with a human body strapped to it up the stairs. After that, he knew ways to avoid staircases, but here there wasn't one. It was a long struggle, each step took ages, but it wasn't an impossible struggle and it wasn't one that lasted forever either. He sighed when this was done. From here on in, it would be like a walk in the park. A walk through a very, very long park with multiple different climates. Outside, beyond the old home of the Dreemurrs, he turned to the woods, to take the lengthy and not very steep paths down the high cliffs of Snowdin to the expanses of Endlesstundra. Even through the centuries, Asgore's capacity to make good names had never improved. The name of every area was just made of one or two words describing what it looked like. And the path he took was a very big detour. He came by many well-meaning Monsters who greeted him, some of which even recognized him as he followed the long road through open fields covered in snow, forests of pine trees that never ended, and of course the icy landscape the place was named after. After a short trip through Darkmarsh, he could take a path further to the south into the searing areas below Hotland. A longer part of the way led through here, the caves of Magmachasm. A wide set of tunnels, connected through roads built over and around a huge ravine that was filled filled out with lava in the middle.

At the very end of his journey stood a massive, far and wide metal wall with a little terminal next to a set of closed doors. With the pass code typed in, he went in and made sure that all the security seals locked themselves behind him. "Phew." He was finally back in the cool and silent halls of his laboratory. Now to move on thinking about the little boy's remains. And his soul. There were a lot of things he could do, but recreating and reanimating the dead wasn't one of them. The human child was dead and there was nothing he could do about it. He had to go about this differently. He pushed the wagon through the corridors and vast halls to the elevator while he thought about it. If he told Asgore, what ideas could he possible come up with?

He wasn't left much time to think about that, as behind the sliding doors of the elevator, Eugene appeared. The black eyes of a female whisperer, dressed in the silken garbs a woman her age wore, gazed back at him and bore her fangs with a smile as she greeted him. "Already back, Doctor?"

The Doctor stretched himself out and met her gaze with wide open eyesockets. "Yes!" He pressed the appropriate button to be taken to the level he wanted to go. While the lift was going, he noticed her growing curiosity of what was under the already red-spotted cloth and quickly made his usual face at her. He didn't stop when she fixated him and started pointing fingers at him, he only did when it was all six of her index fingers. "And I might have a surprise for you lot pretty soon." When she moved one of her hands to the wagon, he quickly pushed it aside and wheezed through his mouth while giving her a long, hard look with one of his eyesockets. After that she backed off with her hands up.

"Sheesh, no need to overdo it."

Once the peril was no more, he relaxed again, shrugged, keeping his shoulders up and hunched his neck forward. "What's the point of a surprise if you spoil it?"

Good, she was backing off and leaving the elevator. Outside, he quickly made some adjustments at the console of the door. If someone else tried to come here, they would not be able to. At least not enter this particular level. And even so, he couldn't keep the doors locked forever, at least not while he was somewhere else fetching things. So he didn't bring the boy to one of the halls, but into a comparably big room that was usually meant for installing a medium-sized machine of sorts here, only that he had none created or invented that would occupy this room. It was more than spacious enough for what he had in mind. With the boy placed here, it was time to leave to make preparations. First came knowledge. He powered up one of the many computers linked to his system and opened up the old digital archives. Well not that old, but they were the archives for things he only planned on planning and not actually doing. Now, one of these things would no longer be a thing he only planned on planning, but instead became a thing he planned on doing and by the end of this or the next day, would become a thing he had already done.

He needed the lists, calculations, exact data on angles, materials, composition of materials, every slightest detail of what he needed. One impulse generator was still in the ruins, but he was lucky to still have several here. Then he needed his high-precision magic realigner to configure the impulse. Prisms, he needed lots of prisms and had to note down what forms they needed. Then various materials he could synthesize. It would take a lot of work, but his curiosity commanded it. The acquisition of what must have been nine to eleven years of experience of the surface as it had become by now, as well as the prospects of finishing one of his long-time pet projects. "Just you watch me, Nef." He mumbled to himself. "Your legacy will allow for the creation of the most powerful weapon ever made." He paused. "Okay, let's not be so sure about that until we absolutely know that that's the case. But still, it will be extremely powerful." Getting done with the prisms was a blast. He had saved all the shapes that he needed. Next up were the reactive substances. Nef had used incenses and special strings, handcrafted under immense effort, to use his magic on the Doctor. Now on the other hand, several centuries had passed. Centuries of him learning, building and improving more and more equipment to work with. It would probably take the humans on the surface centuries over centuries, maybe even over a millennium of uninterrupted improvement to catch up with the level of sophistication of some of the things he had down here. Even if by some strange means they had suddenly been boosted in the field of physics and engineering.

That step was made soon as well. What he needed next was much more simple. Pens. Preferably chalk or crayons as that could be wiped away more easily. Easy step, done within minutes. What next? Oh right, that. The heart piece of the entire ritual. Without it, whatever result was created would just melt within something between hours and minutes. The TEM HUM SOL SUK, or as he preferred to call it, the Determination Extraction machine. For that, he would have to bring the boy and everything else way down to the bottom, bring up the floor and use it there. He didn't want to bother to create a new one, just to keep this a secret until it was done. It wasn't that the assembly chamber couldn't make one, but they were so big that he would rather not. It meant transporting each part the entire way and assembling them together , yatta yatta yatta, completely unnecessary effort if he made one just for this exact case.

In most cases, this wasn't much of a problem, it only became more of a stealth operation once the boy was what he was transporting, but he luckily made it with everything. Last but not least, his automatic measuring and rearranging device. He had to draw a magical circle, and place the prisms in an exact spiral-shaped pattern first, of course this only following the laying out of cables to better guide the impulse as it collects all the additional information feeds he prepared at each point. He next opened up the jaws of the DT extraction machine and placed the boy's carcass inside, one arm in each compartment open specifically for the arm of a human being. He then interfaced the impulse generator with the high-precision magic realigner and loaded the setup specifically for his experiment. He severely hoped it would work. He had run it through simulations, so many times. It had to work. That primitive, handcrafted version from centuries ago worked with him after all. Oh gee, he couldn't believe his hands were shaking. It appeared deep down, where he always belittled Nef's prowess prior to and despite his eventual revival, he now feared he himself would fail. Whenever he wasn't looking, he caught himself fidgeting at the insides of his hands. It was making him giddy. No, he was content. All this machinery allowed to make it so much more precise, even if the experiment failed, he would still create a perfectly fine specimen. Maybe not for science or warfare, but for life.

After doublechecking and re-checking every single component again and again and making sure that the boy didn't have anything he would want to keep left in the pockets of what was left of his jacket, he was finally content with trying it. "All right. Here it goes. Nef, if you are anywhere out there, somewhere, somehow, help me. Now. Please." With his shaky hand bolded to a fist, he smashed it down on the impulse generator and ran away as fast as he could. It all happened within a manner of two to four seconds. At first, there was a faint ring, the magical impulse being fired and channeled through the cables and the prisms, before it grew more and more high-pitched to the point where the Doctor covered his ears while still running despite already having gone around the corner. An ear-shattering explosion, that must have shaken up enough for Eugene to hear it, occurred right where he had set up everything. If he came back there, nothing would be left standing. Everything would be destroyed, the boy's body pulverized and the DT Extraction machine wrecked beyond repair. Exactly as he had planned.


	23. rise of the second skeleton

A Doctor's Duty

Chapter 12

rise of the second skeleton

* * *

He woke up with a shock that went through his entire body. It felt strange, different. He didn't like it. He also didn't like what he saw when he opened his eyes. "oh god what..."

Something was hunched forward and over him. It was wearing a long, black robe with a white tunic underneath as you could see from where the robe opened up at the front. It's face looked a bit like an abominable hybrid between a human skull and an age-old theatre mask with two major cracks, one above his right eye and one downwards from his left eye, but it seemed to be moving. It was smiling at him with a wide-open mouth and white pupils were shining from within the 'eye sockets'. "You're alive!"

He was shuffling away from it, but soon found himself pressing against the tiles of a hospital wall on a bed. Worse than that, his voice. "what are...my voice!" It was way deeper and more throaty, as if he had turned into a grown adult. When he tried to cover his eyes, something else sprung into view. "my hands!"

It stopped smiling and shifted to stand straight. "Oh right, forgot about that. 'ello for a start. I'm the Doctor. But you can call me Wingdings. It's actually Wayne or Doubleyou-Dee Gaster, but I like Wingdings more, it has more of a ring to it. Wing-Ding, Wing-Ding..."

He was screaming the entire time while it was talking. What was going on? What was that thing? What was he? His hands were different, they were all bones. His entire body felt different. Still aghast from everything else, he started feeling his head. "what is happening to me?"

The thing raised it's hand and gestured him to calm down. It took him a minute, but his hyperventilation eventually stopped and the same went for his screams. "Now, now. One thing after the other. I'm Wingdings. Nice to meet you. Do you have a name?"

It took him a little longer, before he had settled enough to answer, but sure enough whatever it was, if it wanted to hurt him, there was nothing stopping it, yet it didn't, so he did as raised to do and held out his own to shake that of the...thing. "sansibar. sansibar aberdeen, rosenthal road thirty-two, kinnett-weidenstrauss"

The upper end of one of the 'skeleton's eyesockets rose. "Name and address without asking. Must have been brought up to do that in case of emergencies. Interesting. I would like to find out if it works some time. Now then, calm down. There is something I need to tell you. You won't like it. It might be a pretty heavy thing to swallow. But I want to be honest with you and I value honesty over sheltered feelings, okay? It is always better in the long run. Okay, are you ready?" He froze, and appeared to be awaiting a response. Out of fear of getting more scared and confused over hearing his own voice, Sansibar nodded without using his voice the slightest bit. "All right, here it comes. You died."

This time, it broke out of him. "oh god, then it's real. it was all real. i killed myself and now i'm going to burn in hell!" He pulled in his legs and covered his face. He was crying. He could feel how solid and rough his face felt, but he was somehow crying regardless. He stayed there, seesawing back and forth. "i just want to go back home, i just want to be back with mommy and daddy, why is this asking too much."

"Yes, speaking of which, someone your age - well - as a human - ought to have parents that are worried. What were you doing up there?" This didn't make it better at all. He kept going. Maybe if he lasted long enough, this would all end somehow. Eventually, the Doctor did get louder and louder. "Listen...Listen! What about your parents? Where are they and why did the allow you to go - well - wherever you went?" They stayed like this for god knew how long. Sansibar staying in place and whimpering things he himself couldn't even understand, until Dr. Gaster's expression loosened up. "...oh...okay, so that's how it is. Family died...okay...", he mumbled, before suddenly changing his stance completely. He placed his hands at the side of the bed and with all that his mask-face allowed, gave him a cheerful smile. "Well I can't bring dead humans back to life, I did what was possible with you, but...speaking of which." He just left the room and came back within seconds with a mirror. "This might help you understand." Before he handed it to him though, he raised a hand. His hands were skeleton hands but more cloggy with the palm being a single organically movable piece rather than just an extension of the fingers, just like how his own looked, but each one had a circular hole right in the middle of the palm. "Now wait! Before I give it to you, I just want you to know that things aren't nearly as bad as they look."

A cold shadow loomed over him. He already had a feeling of roughly what he would see. When he finally took the mirror, he slowly turned it to point at his face. "what happened to me? what am i?" He was a thing. A thing like the Doctor, only that his skull looked much more like an actual skull, it was broader and had nose holes. "please, end this! make it stop! make it stop!" He was curling together again and turning away from the increasingly alarmed Doctor.

"Sansibar, listen! I told you it's not as bad it looks. Okay? Look at me! Look at me." He did, but that didn't make it much better. "You may look like a skeleton, but you're actually not...well that's not quite true, you are a skeleton, you're just not a skeleton-skeleton..." He shook his head. "Okay, wait. First off, most important point: You are alive. You are not dead. Not any more. You are not dead, you are not a walking corpse, you're not some sort of undead miscreant, okay? Now. You're also not a human any more. Creating you the way you are now was necessary, because the alternative was to just leave you dead." He accelerated. "Which I couldn't do for multiple reasons, some of which weren't entirely altruistic - but nonetheless. You are a Monster."

"you're damn right i am!"

"No, not a monster-monster, a Monster. It's a completely different kind of life form. We exist as biological relatives to life forms from all sorts of genera and kingdoms - well okay, 'we' is saying a bit too much, but you're getting the gist of it, aren't you?" He shook his head. "Okay I will...you still have spiders up there, am I right? There were so many kinds of spiders that aren't Monsters, there are even a lot of them down here, there is just no way." He nodded. " Okay. Now keep in mind that you know that spiders exist. Are you familiar with the basic principles of evolution? You know, spread, mutation and ecologically driven selection?" He shook his head again. "Oof, talk about a tough audience...okay, I need to think human superstition. I used to be pretty big on that myself after all. You said 'oh god' before, you still believe in god up there?" He nodded. "Okay, I think I have an idea how to explain it." He left again to speak into some sort of contraption on the wall of the corridor opposite from the room they were in. "Eugene? Please come to the bottom floor room thirty-seven. Thank you."

He went on after coming back. "Now, you surely know that there are spiders that are like this." He made a pretty big shape with his hands. "And then there are spiders that are like this." He made very small one that was barely visible between his thumb and index finger. "I think tarantulas and garden spiders are a good example. Let's operate within the 'god-created' paradigm just for the sake of understanding. So if god created tarantulas that are like this and garden spiders that are like this, he also created among others a completely different kind of spiders that look like..." With a twirl of his hand, he pointed at the exit and froze. They both froze, until after hearing steps in the distance, another thing came in. He was about to scream again, but was caught at the last moment by Dr. Gaster. "Now wait, I know she looks dangerous but she isn't...okay that's a lie, she is dangerous, but she's not going to harm a hair on your head...bad wording...she's not going to lay a finger on you." It had purple skin, long black hair and five horrifying eyes. It was smiling at him with long fangs reaching down her chin and wore a red-green silken robe that glittered in the light of the only lamp in this room.

"Is this the surprise you mentioned?", the purple thing hissed with two of her many arms crossed.

"Yes, but don't tell anyone yet."

"Whatever you say. Doesn't seem that great right now."

"Oh it is, I'm absolutely sure it will be." Once the thing had left through the same exit it had come through, the Doctor turned back to him. "Okay, now that you've seen her, there was an example for a whisperer. A spider Monster. Now, imagine humans being one thing that god created, and then skeletons like us - a different thing that is still sort of human, much like how she is still...sort of spider." He was starting to understand, but didn't make a sound. He just nodded whenever he was asked whether he understood. "Okay, now." From how he acted, it seemed like he was going to make a more important point from there on in. "I can't bring back the dead. And I can't leave this place. Nobody can."

"you mean it really is hell?"

This seemed to annoy him. "No, of course it's not hell, this isn't some underground realm...well okay it is underground, but it's not an afterlife where you...well your life ended and this is sort of after it - but it's not a punishment for killing yourself! Only a consequence of the exact same thing." He turned around and looked at him from the side of his skull. "I'm starting to think there might be something about that hell theory of yours." He caught Sansibar as he was about to cry again. "Calm down, I'm only joking, there is no hell! Hell is just a story humans tell each other to make each other follow arbitrary rules. It's a lie that creates social stability because the values associated with the religion it's part of foster healthy families but in and of itself it is not true, okay? Get this idea out of your head. There is no god, there is no messiah, no holy trinity, none of this nonsense! Just as an example, Monsters also have this creation myth in which there is this other world with fantasy races like 'Mongolians' and 'Egyptians' and a dog and a Temmie from there created this world for the entertainment of others, just like that! These kinds of myths can be any degree of ridiculous, and someone will still believe them to be true! These stories are just stories! It's humbug! Gobbledigook! It has no bearing on reality! You are still on earth. Just a few layers further inside it."

The Doctor finally calmed down and took a few seconds to recollect his thoughts. "Look, the point I am getting to is the following. We can't leave the Underground. War happened, extremely determined human attacked, I died, Asgore lost it, centaurs betrayed us - it's a long story, okay? Just take my word for it for now, we can't leave the Underground and no, that still doesn't mean that this is hell."

"wait, you died?"

"Well yes, of course I died, do I look like a human to you? I went through the same dying-and-being-raised-as-skeleton process as you! Even a much more archaic version of it. I was big on religion as well. I was a monk. Could you believe that? Studying scripture, chaste life dedicated to serving the lord, the whole thing. Now would you please, please let me get to the point?" Sansibar nodded, still not understanding where this was going. The doctor took one more relieved breath. "Thank you. So, skeletons are not a naturally occurring species. We are artificial. Which is the main reason why we don't reproduce. At least not naturally. And as for your family, we can't go back up and I can't bring them back to life. I can't turn you back into a human either. As far as the surface is concerned, you are dead and stuck down here. But what I can offer to you is this. We are the only skeletons, and if the creation of skeletons is what constitutes family, for all that matters..." He spread out his arms and tilted back with a wide smile. "I can be your family from here on in. I have several empty rooms, you can pick and choose one of them, I can show you around here, if you want to, even in the Underground. I can teach you everything you need for work here or similar work elsewhere. It would at least go much, much faster if you had me teach you than some standardized school that leaves so much potential unused." He knelt down beside the bed and stretched out his hand once again. "I can't offer you your old family. I can only offer you a new one."

He was hesitant. All this was a lot of stuff to digest, and he didn't know how to react. Was he really trapped here? Could he trust this person? He closed his eyes, which were soon already filled with tears again as he thought of his parents. What he had lost. What would they want? For him to linger forever, or to step into the unknown? He didn't know how long they stayed in place like this, but he soon thought it through. He didn't have to forget his parents. He just had to move forward in life and grab the opportunities that were given to him. When his life was shattered, he wasn't given any options, no opportunities. And now, under circumstances he would never have thought of, it didn't matter where it was, it didn't matter what it looked like, what he finally saw for once was an open hand. Someone was reaching out to him.

So he took it, and once the deal was made, Wingdings helped him up and off the bed. "Now then, you said your name was Sansibar?" He nodded. "Hm, shortens itself to 'Sans'. Little Sans, that has a good ring to it." As he followed Dr. Gaster outside, he felt the cold of the solid metal floor against the - bones? - of his feet. Outside in the corridor, Wingdings hasted ahead and spun pirouettes with stretched-out hands while sliding across the smooth floor. "Come along, little Sans!" And come along, he did.

At least he tried to. He slowly stepped away from the bed, still riddled with thoughts at what was happening, what was going to happen. What had happened...Upon stepping through the doorframe into the corridor, suddenly it felt like the world was collapsing again. Strange, deformed white columns were shooting out of the walls and narrowing down the surrounding room. "help!", he cried for help and cowered together, the enormous bones all around him were increasing in numbers and almost filling the entire area around him.

"Sans! Whoa, almost got me." Wingdings turned around to get to him, but needed to dodge some of those white objects as they flew in his direction. Sans felt more and more lost, and the worse it got, the more force and speed was in those things. "Sans! Listen to me! Focus on my voice!" They slowed down, but they didn't stop.

"what is happening?" He couldn't even look any more, he just wanted it all to stop. Everything. Suddenly, the grinding of bone against bone stopped. When he opened his eyes, the objects were all still there, they merely came to a complete stop.

"Sans!" Dr. Gaster took the opportunity to maneuver through them and get to Sans and place his hand on his shoulder. It was cold to the touch, not as cold as he expected it to be, but still cold. "Sans, listen, this is your magic. All of this. No-one else can change what these things do or how many of them there are, but you." Even with his open eyes, he had been covering them with his hands mostly, but looking back at the ghastly-looking smile of the Doctor did calm him down a bit. "I know you're confused, but I can promise you, things will look better than they do for you right now. Now one way I heard that works is this. Look at them. They look like bones." They did. "I can't use magic attacks. I am simply not capable of it. Anything magic coming from me is artificially induced, I myself with my body can't cast anything. You can, and these bones are your magic attacks. Now to make them go away, I want you to listen carefully. Pick any one of them, picture it in your mind, see if you can feel it and then let go. Just release it."

He turned his eyes - or whatever he had in their stead, to one particularly big one to the right of the Doctor. He closed his eyes to picture it, what it probably looked like including the part that just seemed to phase through the floor. It did feel sorta like a faint string on his back. He imagined himself holding that string with his hand instead, and tried to relax, he just let it drift away. When he opened his eyes, the bone was gone. "Wonderful. Now let's not be in too much of a hurry and risk mistakes. Do the same thing with one after the other." And so he did. One bone at a time, the entire corridor cleared out until it was only the two of them again. "Good. From now on remember, if this happens again, it's you. You know how to undo it now. You're still not used to it, so emotions will cause involuntary magic attacks, but at first, you learn to suppress it, then you won't even notice it."

Together, they continued to the elevator with Wingdings still pushing Sans along the way. "Now then, first off, you're going to need something to put on." After sliding ahead, he dialed for the lift to come to their level. "You might not notice, because you're used to humans, but you walking around undressed like this is highly inappropriate, and believe me, naturally occurring Monsters will notice. Choice is pretty limited right now for your size, what's your favourite colour?"

"blue."

"Blue it is then. Pretty unlikely that we don't have that." After a trip with a lift and quite a bit of navigating through long and labyrinthine corridors, they came to a stop next to a room a bit smaller than the spacious ones they passed. It was an entire room, dedicated to a wardrobe, countless different sets of clothing hung to both sides, and when he stepped further inside, he noticed that this was just one aisle of several. "Now then, we're going to need the child sized ones...no, no, no, no..." He picked one robe out, flung it aside and picked out the next again and again, making a pile of discarded robes. "Ah, maybe this is what you would be looking for." What he gave Sans was a light blue robe similar to his own, but smaller and with a white tunic to wear below it.

Sans came closer and examined it once he received it from all sides. "uh...thank you?"

Dr. Gaster knelt down and patted him on the skull a few times before getting back up. "Very good. Go on, put it on and follow me, we are far from done." His new 'skin' felt different as it was, but putting these kinds of loose and ancient clothes on was all the more weird. Still on the same level, their next destination seemed to be in one of the further corners of this complex. A cornered hallway with several open doors to identical-looking rooms. "These are the rooms for all the lab assistants. But you can have one for free. Take your pick, any one of the three open ones, you can have. Actually, until further notice, you can have all three of them for all that matters. Go on, take a look. He pushed Sans further inside one of them and then ran off. The walls were covered in tiles and panels of solid metal and ceramic as they were everywhere else. It had a bed on one side, a lengthy table with a chair and some contraption on one side of table. A cloggy sign lay on the table, but it depicted nothing. In front of it lay another device, similar to a typewriter, but more closed and with a softer-feeling surface, and next to it, a strange oval - thing that fit neatly into a human hand.

"Taken an interest in the computer I see. It's only really an altered version of pre-existing Temmie electronics that I modified to be more easier and more intuitive to use for humanoids. Here. Whatever room you choose, I already have something to place inside it. Your first real present from me." What he handed to him was a thick book. "Hand-signed by the author and with a special cover, the only one of it's kind." He raised it to give it a good look. It was solidly bound and it's cover had a portrait of the Doctor drawn, in which he was hunched to the side with a wide open smile, widened and brighter glowing pupils and his hands stretched out in both directions. When he lowered it, he realised that Wingdings was making the exact same pose behind it. "And? Do you like it?" The title read 'The Doctor's introduction to Quantum Physics - by Dr. W. D. Gaster'.

Sans stood there, turning it around and looking at it from all sides. He opened it, to see it was a book with hard to understand descriptions and precisely drawn images on it's pages. "Lengthy inspection. That indicates interest. Perfect, that's all I wanted!", the tall skeleton commented before leaving the room.

"thank you, doctor", he replied. "i...don't know what to say."

"Then don't say anything until you do." There was something very cheerful about Mr. Wingdings. Either this was just his strange demeanour, anticipation or...something. "Just place it in whatever room you choose. And of course, it would be better if you memorize which one. Can't read a book if you don't know where it is." Sans placed it right in this one on the table. The open ones looked all the same. Which he did mention. "That is correct, but soon, it won't be. Take Eugene's room for example. It's covered in cobwebs and she replaced the bed with a hammock...which is also made of cobwebs. Generally speaking, the lab is crawling with spiders right now. If there is anything you don't want her to know, you better avoid saying it out loud anywhere here. Because she will know. The other rooms belong to Missel and Brett. You will get to know them sooner or later." He led him to a small room but the walls of which were open to the neighbouring ones. Most of it's walls were lined with tables and niches with kitchen utensils, some of which he recognized, some of which he didn't. One of the ones he didn't was a big glass chest with metal casing.

Wingdings gestured Sans to take a seat and opened the 'chest'. A strange mist came out of it once open, and he could feel an overwhelming cold coming from it, the moment it was open. "Now then...what do you eat?" He picked out something very thick, dark, and grotesque-looking." I presume since human cuisine is what you're used to, giant spider leg is not on the menu." Sans shook his head. "Thought so. How about...no, that's for me. I never get enough of pork, and I also claim the honey to sweeten it. Now then, for you...ah, how about bread and herring?" He brought Sans a plate with...something...and placed it on the table. From the distance, it would have looked like an ordinary loaf of bread, but it was given the rough shape of a fish. "The meat of herrings mixed into dough and then baked with a modified oven to be sure to get it free of any diseases. Not that salmonella would affect us as monsters, but nonetheless, I thought it would be a good idea in case we met some humanoid, back when I made the recipe. I call it 'brerring' for the time being. The name will be replaced once a better one occurs to me." He put it in an oven along with his own meal and placed both on the table once they were finished.

Sans sat there and stared at this dish. He didn't feel like eating. He didn't feel like anything at all. Could he even eat? Was that even possible? "Go on, it's fresh from the oven. You're going to lose your strength if you don't eat regularly." Lose his strength...After a while, Dr. Gaster just tore off one of the 'fish' fins, ate it in a very visible way, and swallowed it. How was that possible if he was a skeleton? Then again, maybe there was more truth to his words than he first thought, and they weren't skeleton-skeletons, but something else...that was alive. He gave it one try and took the loaf in his hand. It's surface indeed felt like bread. When he pressed his fingers together to break off a piece, he smelled on it. He could smell. He only had a nosehole but he could still smell. He had to admit, it did smell like fresh-baked bread. He tried opening his mouth and bit off a piece. It all felt different, and yet it was the same. It was still warm bread only that it was very faintly...fishy.

He started breaking off bits of it to eat. Bit by bit, but very hesitantly. He had a place to sleep here, he got a present and was served a personally made warm meal. It was almost like...like...He broke together again, buried his face in his sleeves. He wanted home so badly, he didn't want any of this, he just wanted his life back, his parents. Where were even his tears coming from? He had no eyes. Before he knew, the Doctor was kneeling next to the chair and facing him eye to eye. "Sans, Sans listen." He gave the reluctant skeleton a hug.

Sans interrupted him though. "doctor, i'm sorry.", he whimpered, trying to form words between his shivers. "i just want to go home, so badly..."

"It's okay. Listen, I know what this kind of loss is like. Believe me, I do." He was himself trembling for some reason. "But your family - picture what they would want. Do you think they would want you to wallow in your own misery for all time? Don't you think they would want you to be happy, however possible?" Sans shook his head at the first question and nodded to the second, grinding his skull both times against the black fabric. "You see? All you can do is try to fulfill this wish. Do whatever it takes to move on. It's got to be possible, okay? I have everything available that the Underground can offer. It will work out somehow. Whatever it is that children of your time do to have fun, we can go and do it. We can make a sleigh and ride through the snow of the tundra. We can climb and go skiing on the howling peaks, feed the fish and ducks in Waterfall, we can go to the city and see all the wonders the magic of Monsters can make possible. So please, do me the favour, do yourself, everyone that ever cared about you the favour, and at least try to build yourself a happy life down here." He didn't stop, but he raised his hand to return the gesture. It took a while for Dr. Gaster to get to it. "If you like, we can also just stay like this. Let it all out now, you'll feel better afterwards."

He took him up on his last offer, but he had no concept of how long it took, until it finally subsided. "Better?" When Sans nodded, they separated again. His eyes had been overflowing, his nose had been running, it was like he was still human, even though he knew better. Some of the things here, in what little light there was, reflected what was in front of them. As if he knew exactly what he needed, Wingdings placed a filled glass of water on the table. Sans drank it without hesitation. It was refreshing and exactly what he needed. "Now then. Go on and eat. It's all still there." They had their - as he would tell him - breakfast mostly in silence, and he only really went on, when he was already placing the dishes in the sink. "Feel better?" After Sans nodded, the tall skeleton, with a more uplifting angle of what facial features he had, got up for good. "Now then, in regards to loss, do I need to prove to you that I know what it's like? Would it make you feel better if you knew?"

At this point, Sans didn't know what to expect or what would lead to where, so he just started to agree to wherever the Doctor took him. They paced through the corridors, back to the other side, into the elevator, to a completely different level and after a long trip around corner after corner after corner, significantly longer than the last few, they arrived at a wall. Judging from the patterns from everywhere else, where that wall stood, there should have been a door, but all that there was, was a little machine similar to the not-typewriter in his room but smaller. It only had numbers on it. The nervous skeleton dialed - something on it. When it opened, what Sans saw was a gallery, illuminated in the very moment that the two of them stepped in. It reached quite far and there were rows and rows of paintings hung and stood up. Most of them depicted another thing. Possibly female from the looks of it. It had short, spiky horns peeking out at the top of it's head and whatever her very extensively decorated garb and jewelry didn't cover, was covered by snow white fur. Strands of the same fur hung down wherever a part of her head ended, the ends of her long, floppy ears, the sides of her face, some hung even off the sides of her eyebrows.

"Oh, she? Uh...it's complicated. There's no way I can avoid Eugene knowing, but from everyone else, I would greatly appreciate it if you kept this a secret. He typed something else on a similar device on the wall on the inside of the room, which closed the door behind them. "The people you really care about, never leave you. You never forget them. But life goes on, even if you lose them." There were paintings of more things, yet not nearly as many as this big, female goat creature. "I have only ever had three best friends - friends I genuinely cared about. One of them is her son. Another one, the one I'm on about, is him."

He led Sans to a portrait of a sinister looking thing. He wore a black-purple robe that was very elegantly designed and looked up into the sky, in a manner that must have been an attempt at looking serious. An attempt, because his facial features as well as his ears bore the freaky appearance of a bat. The hands he held down were covered in brown fur and had claws at their ends. "'ello Nef. Look what I have here!" Wingdings started smiling and getting into an increasingly good mood. He grabbed Sans by both shoulders and held him in front of the picture. "Yes! That's what it is! I never forgot! You remember my promise? As soon as he is ready, I can verify whether I already managed to keep it. Even if I didn't this time, I will. I will try again and again and again." His hands were trembling for some reason. "Nef...why must this only work with humans?" But he soon shook his head and regained his composure. "Well, nothing we can do about it." He was talking to the painting. "All I can do is try to push the potential of your legacy to the fullest, am I right?" He paused, but it really seemed like he was asking the portrait. As Sans expected, it wasn't responding. "I will come back to you when I make progress, maybe even beforehand. For now, this one is getting increasingly concerned for my sanity. Maybe for a good reason."

Without a word, the Doctor let Sans go and headed back to the gallery's exit to open the door. "Sans, before I open this door, there is one more thing."

"what?"

"We will visit her son not before long. You know, her's." He pointed at the goat lady. "I would really rather if you didn't mention any of this to him."

"why?"

"I'll explain that when you're older. I'm just putting my faith in you keeping this to yourself for now." This couldn't have been too hard. Sans nodded and soon followed Dr. Gaster back outside, where he closed the door once again. "Now then, where do you want to start? What do you want to do? Where do you want to go?"

The Doctor was just dancing ahead. "where can i go?"

"Wherever you like. The Underground is gigantic. Describe any place you would like to visit, there most likely is one like that. And zones of very strongly varying climates are very close together. It wouldn't be too far a journey, regardless of what kind of place you wanted to visit. If you can't figure something on your own, what do humans of your time do to entertain children?"

Sans hesitated and took a moment to think, while stepping after the dancing shade. "sometimes, there are fairs, or a circus."

Wingdings stopped in place at once and pointed right at him. "Circus! Now we already have something. Tell me about your circuses! We could go to New Home to - wait. How would you like a trip to a castle? A real royal castle? With a king, a throne room and all that you expect? - Well, maybe a bit smaller than you expect, Asgore's more of the modest type."


	24. an ambiguous hell

A Doctor's Duty

Chapter 13

an ambiguous hell

* * *

In his whimsical and lively fashion that Sans could come to know the Doctor for, he paced and danced in front of him while they wandered through an extremely hot place, below the rocky platform they were walking on and told stories of the most ridiculous things that supposedly really existed. Down here, in the Underground. Sans could see rivers of molten lava run as far as he could see, until it spread out into more small rivers in the distance and soon, they found themselves in front of a solid metal structure, much like that of the lab, but inside, he saw that it was another elevator. There were only few of those on the surface, at least that he had seen, and he was always a bit afraid to use them. All the more since this one not only went up and down, but along several different tracks, and so fast, the interior shook immensely every time. He wasn't so sure how much of the Doctor's reassurance of it's safety he should believe.

"Welcome to the bazaar!", he announced, spreading his arm across a tall and wide, blocky building in front of the two of them. The wide open doors made way for a large hall that was packed to every corner with little stands serving small, handmade contraptions, toys, sweets, everything all the way to jewelry. "Anything city folk could think of wanting, someone will be selling it here. If that is at any point in time not the case, it will be very soon thereafter. When Wingdings saw, how curious the stands made Sans, he took a long detour through at least this one hall, past every single stand and even bought him a bag of sweetened hazelnuts that were sold at a stand he examined for a little too long. "The way to the castle leads straight through the CORE. To this day my largest and most powerful of creations. Pretty literally actually. That is what it does. It provides an area as far as the people here can think of with electric power. Any household as far as you can travel within a day gets it's power from this very place." He was led across a bridge back into another metal construction similar to the lab.

"So where was I? Oh right, the serpentine rapids. They're actually not what you would expect from the name. The water currents don't just go left and right on a constant stream downwards. The serpentine path it's named after is horizontal. It goes up and down. In part it's due to the very precise formation is has - whether it's artificial or occurred naturally, I don't know, and in part due to outwardly circumstances of magical origin. But after a very long stretch in which it barely has any downwards tendency at all, it finally leads into a turquoise shining lake illuminated by bioluminescent algae and insects. That lake is populated by submarine geese. Geese that live under water and only jump out of the water to catch flies and other insects that fly above it." He went on and on and on about this place and that place, until he noticed that Sans had stopped to take in the reaches of the grey city below them. "Oh that? Yes, that's New Home. Not the biggest city, but the capital of the Underground. If there is any place nearby, where we can find a circus or some major show of similar caliber, this is going to be it. Either that or it's where we find out where to find one."

As they followed the long bridges, first one along a ledge, then one straight over and through between the inner city buildings, he noticed that they were indeed approaching a house of sorts, but the lack of people present confused him. "where are the guards?"

Dr. Gaster turned back to him and chuckled. "Guards? The kind of people we're visiting don't need guards. They're their own guards." On the other side of the bridge, in a small, well-blooming garden, a thing was watering the tiny sapling of a tree. He had white fur and floppy ears like the goat lady from that gallery he shouldn't talk about, but he had well-grown and curved horns. Judging from his stature and by comparing his looks to the last goat thing he had seen, he seemed like a slender young man, a little taller than a human, with blonde hair growing over his fur on his head like how a human had their hair grow, and the same golden strands, very faintly, lined the upper and lower size of his mouth. "Asgore!"

Pleased to see Wingdings, Asgore stopped what he was doing, placed down the watering can and greeted his visitor with open arms. "Brother Wayne, what brings you here?"

Before gesturing Sans to stay put, Wingdings hasted - almost bounced - in Asgore's direction and put his hands together in excitement. "Oh please, not in front of the boy. Speaking of which, I have a new lab assistant." He was brimming with enthusiasm and had the voice to meet it. "Say hello to little Sans!" Sans took this as his queue to shyly wave at this 'Asgore. He was wearing two small, golden shoulder pieces and a long robe that stretched all the way to his rabbit feet and bore a strange crest with three triangles and a winged circle that he had seen in several places on their way here. He had better not give a false impression, in case this really was the king Wingdings had mentioned.

Asgore didn't step closer, but he smiled back at the younger skeleton. After a moment though, his expression started stiffening and his eyes widened. He turned to Mr. Wingdings. "Is this - ?"

The corners of the tall skeleton's mouth rose. "Yes."

"But then he - how? Where?"

While still standing in place, the Doctor slowly drifted away from his king. "Well, you know that one thing you said I shouldn't look into?" Sans could see the growing irritation on the king's face. "I looked into it."

"Wayne!"

Only then did Dr. Gaster step away and put up his hands in defense. "I'm sorry, okay? I couldn't resist. And when I first came to see him, he was already dead. What was I supposed to do?"

"Consult me?"

"And bring him here? All the way through the well-populated areas and straight through the bazaar - full of people any of which could have uncovered him? Seen him? Taken his soul? Even if I made it." He held up his hand to mimic the mouth of Asgore talking, while speaking through one half of his own mouth with a voice that sounded like an attempt at mockery of Asgore's. "What happened to 'For the last time, Wayne, we are not going back to the surface yet. We don't need a way out right now. We just have to wait to be sure they are no longer hostile.'?" That was the point where he stopped and started talking normally again. "If I brought him here, he would have just ended up lying somewhere. If we were lucky, soul diffusion would take effect and he would be just gone by the time we made any decision on what to do, ineffectual and completely dead. If we were not so lucky, someone would have taken it, left for the surface if powerful enough, gone around doing who knows what and ruined any prospects of us ever getting back to the surface in peace."

Both faced each other without a word spoken for a few moments, but eventually, Asgore gave in. "I suppose you have a point. But please, find a way to involve me in your decisions next time."

The Doctor inched closer again. "Can I take this as a subtle 'It might be time to reconsider staying down here at some point in the vaguely distant future?'"

Asgore shook his head. "For the time being, we stay put. Your choice was right in hindsight. Why are you so hell-bent on returning anyway? Do we not have all that we need down here?"

"Well, there's the sun and the residue of power from diffusing human souls. These are two things we don't have down here."

"We don't need them to survive. The people are content with what they have here."

"Right now they are. What do we do if or when that changes?"

Asgore hesitated, he just stared back for a few moments before closing his eyes and turning around to head inside. "When an opportunity arises, I will consult Toriel whether she changed her mind. Thank you for coming to me."

"It was the first thing I thought of doing."

Sans could have sworn he had picked up a bit of a bitter note in their goodbyes. The moment that other name fell, Dr. Gaster's silly stances ceased and made way for an upright, tense skeleton, who accompanied Sans across the bridge back to the city of New Home. "what's wrong?"

He stayed silent until they had gained a good piece of distance, before he turned around to look back at the house for a moment and then moved on. "Toriel, Toriel, Toriel, Toriel, Toriel. I'm about as fond of Toriel as Gerson is. But if Asgore's happy, so am I and at least they haven't had children yet. There's always to hoping."

"who's toriel?"

"The Queen of the Monsters. Before Nef and I existed - Asgore was only in his twenties then - his inner circle of friends consisted mostly of two boss monsters called Toralian and Ariel. He helped them with their wedding, they had a child, about hundred years later, Asgore married their daughter. They've been inseparable ever since and he won't take a step out of the house unless she approves of it. Very controlling, this Toriel. And extremely protective. I like to call her the goat that hates fun." Sans couldn't suppress a chuckle. "But don't tell Asgore I said that." He pointed at Sans while they went back through the core to the bazaar to highlight the importance of this. "I mean it, if he hears this, I'll never hear the end of it. From neither of both of them."

"but if this is asgore - he looks so young."

"Well of course. He's a boss monster. They're a completely different species. They originated in a set of climate zones that are among the coldest of the world. And as you can probably guess, everyone starts small, and even they used to have pretty barbaric standards of living. So one big problem was always child mortality. The way they adapted to it - a safety measure to prevent their young from sudden death in the cold in emergencies, has evolved to become inherent and all-defining to them. They form a connection, through which they feed part of their own life energy to their children, until their children reach a certain age. That same physical age you saw Asgore in. Any 'young adult' boss monster you see could be a good thousand years old for all you know. And after that, the time in which their bodies have at least one child to sustain is the only time that they grow and age. At all. In fact, their true, full-grown form - they're actually a lot bigger and broader than Asgore right now - they can only achieve by having children. Their growth just stops with their aging until they do, and their strength actually grows with their first child."

"and the one in your gall..."

At once, Wingdings shushed him so loudly, that Sans first didn't hear himself over it, and then simply stopped talking. His mask-shaped skull turned down in his direction as he first raised a finger and then pointed it at Sans. "No." Sans quickly remembered that he wasn't supposed to talk about that.

Looking once more upon the many stands they had arrived at and the many different looking things - some animals, some something else, he patted Sans a few times on the shoulder. "Now then, still want to go hunting for a circus?"

And without they set out to ask their way around for passed-by circuses and fairs. Even though more than that, it was Sans exploring the city and Dr. Gaster keeping him encouraged and coming along with this cheerful attitude. Even way later, Sans never figured out whether it was Wingdings trying to cheer him up, or whether this was just what he was like, because he never stopped being like that. Ever. At least whenever he could be. They didn't find either of what they were looking for, but it was interesting and fun nonetheless. They eventually settled for tickets to watch a show of things - Monsters as Mr. Wingdings insisted that he called them - dancing on stage to obscure and slow music. The time of the day that was left, Dr. Gaster spent showing him around Hotland and Magmacavern. He insisted that they stayed in the two very, very hot areas, because they were close to the laboratory. They were nice distractions, but eventually, it was time to go to sleep. Mr. Wingdings distracting him like that did make him feel a little better, but it wasn't all better and you can probably figure how Sans' first night in the Underground was like, alone in his new room.

On the next morning, he was woken up by Wingdings knocking on his door and taking him to the kitchen for another breakfast. At Sans' request for them not to spend their time in the 'rather warm' areas near the lab, they headed further out. Caves riddled with ceaseless currents of water were followed by a larger area that was covered in snow with a few small, distant huts. After a long trip through a similarly frosty landscape, he eventually saw that they were on the top of a high set of cliffs, and way below extended wide plains and forests as icy as this place. When he complained about the cold, Dr. Gaster remarked that he would get him a pair of slippers for later. A hike through an unmanageable thicket later, they came by a winded slope that led them downwards very slowly. It didn't go on forever though and at some point, they found themselves all the way down on the ground. The area was wide open, and completely covered in snow. Earlier, up on the cliffs, he did see a wooden house in the distance, but even that was way too far away and probably behind the distant trees.

All that was here was a never-ending fall of snow, a ground covered in it and...nothing. "Do you hear it, Sans?"

He didn't know what Mr. Wingdings was talking about. "no."

"Exactly." They followed the path a little further, until the two of them left the road and walked straight into the cold emptiness. "No sound, no smells, nothing to see, only a huge, all encompassing wall, the ever-falling snow and clear air." They came by a bench that Wingdings sat down on and Sans sat down next to him. "Nothing to interfere whatsoever. Whenever nothing else works for ideas, decisions or generally reevaluating my outlook on life, this is the place I go to. If you need time to think, this is where I think you can best spend it. Pardon my presumptuousness, but I had a feeling that this was what you need right now." He was right and Sans didn't object. "It's what I needed after - well after a long story happened. If you follow that road to the left, it leads you past the trees to a little Inn. If you want to go home, you will find me there. Unless you want me to stay here with you." He was about to get up and leave, but without even consciously understanding what he himself was mumbling while he did it, Sans grabbed his hand and pulled him back. It took Dr. Gaster a moment to register, but once he did, he came back around the bench and sat down again.

He took the Doctor up on his offer. He thought everything over. What had happened to him. Whether he could ever really recover from it, whether this was all real or maybe some unwritten-about limbo. Maybe he died and all that happened was dreamt up in an after-life fever dream. But he couldn't remember anything happening that would lead to his death until the day that his life went to pieces. If this was a nightmare or some satanic illusion, it was certainly one that felt very real. He couldn't hold back the tears, when he reminded himself that all this meant that there was no going back. He could never have his old life back, and none of the people that it involved. Eventually he just found himself sitting there, frozen in motion and staring at each flake of snow falling and adding itself onto the surfaces of his robe. Possibly for hours. The cold didn't seem to affect him as much as he first thought.

He only realised he had fallen asleep when a solid, boney finger was tipping him on the shoulder. "Sans?" He was still slightly startled when he saw those big, black, hollow eyes and the lights within them stare at him upon opening his eyes. "I wouldn't wake you up otherwise, but if you still want to go somewhere else today, we're going to have to get a move on before long." Sans thanked him once again. For spending all this time trying to cheer him up. "Well of course, it's only understandable. But you really better make a decision now, because you only have today left to relax. Tomorrow is going to be a tough day." He thought about asking why that was the case, but asking that wouldn't make much of a difference. He just spent a few more moments reconsidering.

"you said there was an inn?"

"Yes, right over there, see the road? Why? Is this where you want to go? Inn?" He nodded at Sans with a smile.

"yeah."

"Then the Inn it is." At once, he hopped off the bench and marched through the half knee-deep snow and only stopped to wait for Sans, when he was at the road and would have vanished out of sight if he had gone much further. The last bit, it was much easier to traverse the road with most of it's snow flattened from people that probably frequently traveling over it. Behind it, less than a few dozen metres away was a house made of thick logs of brown wood. When they opened the door, the first thing he felt was the heat from inside enveloping him at once and melting what was left on the snow on his robe. On tables all around, Monsters turned around to see who was entering, before most of them went back to their conversations, drinks and food. Without a word, the two of them headed over to an empty table in the corner, where they sat down on opposite benches.

After they waited for a few minutes, a big, dressed brown bear came along and leaned on the table with one of his paws. "So what can I bring you two...Doctor! What brings you back to these parts."

"Ernest, meet little Sans." Following a gesture that prompted Sans and the bear to shake hands, he continued. "He just recently came to the capital and I'm showing him around the surrounding sights."

The burly creature laughed with it's belly rocking as it did. "Then I am honoured. So, Doctor, the usual?"

"Preferably not for him. He's still a bit young for mead." The bear offered him cooked water or hot milk, so he ordered the latter, from then on in, he just silently took in the warm and lively surroundings. Two lizards on the other side were exchanging stories and laughing hysterically as one of them told his, a man-sized hand was playing cards with a thing who's head was just one big human eye. In another corner on the other side, Satan himself was drinking from a big jug and slightly dangling left and right on the one arm he was leaning on. He didn't even want to bother causing a commotion about this at this point. He decided to just pretend not to notice and ask Dr. Gaster what rationalization he would next have for the devil in the flesh sitting drunk in this very lodge - given that this wasn't hell.

They stayed for quite a while, even when both skeletons were done with their drinks and Wingdings payed his tab, until Sans had warmed up and was ready to head home. Once he was sure that they were outside and the door was closed, he asked him about Satan. "Satan? What...oh." He broke out in laughter, and didn't continue until he had pulled himself together. "It's the other way round. The visual ideas of the devil you're thinking of, the brawny satyrs in so many drawn images, what do you think inspired them? That man in the Inn is even now known as a 'horned devil'. They may be named after the mythical creature they inspired, but the horned devils existed long before your concept of 'the devil' did. While the traits often associated with them probably do apply to a lot of horned devils, they're not this supreme evil entity you have in mind."

Despite not having done much on this day - it was probably the cold - he was exhausted once they were back 'home'. He was so tired, he didn't even need to cry himself to sleep. But no matter how long his nap took, it was still too early that the knocking on his door resumed. "Sans? Come on, it's a new day, and it's time for work." What kind of work could there be? Why did he even knock? The door wasn't locked. Expecting this to go on for as long as he stayed in bed, he got up and opened the door to see a mask-face smiling down to him. "There you are! Time for breakfast!" This time, there were two people sitting at the kitchen table when they arrived. One of them was Eugene, the spiderwoman. The other was something. It had a head that was attached to the rest of it's edgy yet plump body. It was slightly shorter than a garden gnome and was using two insect wings to fly above it's chair, rather than sitting on it. "Good morning, everyone. Sans, you've already met Eugene. This is Missel, a whimsun. Everyone, say hello to Sans the skeleton." The smaller insect Monster waved at him and resumed poking whatever paste he was eating with his fork.

After a short trip through the lab that followed breakfast, they came to a small chamber with a black board and two tables with chairs. Wingdings paced ahead, picked one piece of chalk and started a back and forth between him and Sans. He was trying to narrow down what knowledge Sans had and where he could start adding to what was already there. "Well, it's not an awful lot, but it's worlds beyond what the average boy your age knew in my time.", was his final verdict. Sans wasn't sure whether that was a good or bad thing. He disappeared for a short while, before he came back with a few books, and some paper and pens of kinds Sans hadn't seen before. Upon closer inspection, 'Dr. W. D. Gaster' turned out to be the author of most of those books. With these, he proceeded exactly as planned. He put together a set of rules that Sans knew from school and added a few new ones. He then gave him a set of problems to solve using those rules. Unfortunately, once Sans was done with one set, he was just given a new one. Again and again, for hours and each time, they became more convoluted and themselves longer to solve. "No." Was all he got, when he asked for a break. It went on and on and on.

When he thought this was some form of divine punishment that would never end, he came back one more time to announce that it was over after all. "Time for lunch. Your work's done for now. At least your schooling work."

"what other work is there?"

The Doctor hesitated while picking out his plate. "For you, probably none. I would rather spend this afternoon dismantling my equipment. You just try and stay in the lab. The lab is safe...most of it at least. It's probably best if you just stay put either in your room or the library. The library would certainly have more books though. Makes for a lot of reading and keeps you from doing anything dangerous. Except maybe throwing over bookshelves. But I'm just going to trust you not to do that. Of course if you like, you can practise for your schooling tomorrow. There's going to be the same routine of hard work in the morning every day of the week from now on." Oh god, that was...bearable. Not as infinite as he was afraid it would be. He declined and definitely preferred the library to physical labour. "Missel, you'll be in charge of him. If he asks for help finding any book he likes, you will show him where to find it. And with this, see you later." The Doctor himself disappeared, it was the flying insect that led Sans through the elevator to a hall filled with wooden bookshelves that held rough and either old or primitively bound books. He was lucky to find out that not all of them were textbooks on the sciences. The whimsun did bring him a pile of tomes that held collections of fables, mythical short stories and a few whole novellas on life on the surface in the middle ages.

He tried reading one of the latter that appeared to be written by a Monster, going from the description of the author, but from the descriptions within the actual prologue, it seemed Monsters had a ludicrously exaggerated idea of how strong a grown human being was. That was slightly confusing at first, but it was overall entertaining and captivated him well enough that he didn't notice how much time had passed until. "Ah, there you are. I'm done, scrubbed off all the blood and got all the equipment back here.", the Doctor came back with something in his hand that caught Sans' full attention at once. "Does this mean anything to you?" What he presented to him was Daddy's pocket watch. The one Sans held in his final moments. From the looks of it, he genuinely had no idea how much that meant to Sans. He took it out of the Doctor's hands at once and ran his arms around the knelt-down skeleton. "Hm, spontaneous, physically expressed affection...or...gratitude?" He nodded. "Unusual for an artificial life form. I will have to note that down." Sans was shivering. He had just spent the day distracting himself from it and upon seeing the watch, it all came back. "I presume this means that you do remember it and that it has a meaning." Sans didn't answer. He just nodded while still in place. "I see. Is it okay now, can I let go?" When Sans nodded, Dr. Gaster stepped back, stood up and bent down again to face him from above. "So, did you discover the joys of literature?"

Sans, still wiping off some of his tears, didn't have talking in him at the moment, so he headed back to his table sat down in front of that same novella. "Hm.", the Doctor hummed as he walked around the table and inspected what Sans was reading. "Historically Inaccurate prose. But you're reading something, so that works for me." This same routine repeated itself for the next three days. Breakfast, Math problems, followed by introduction to accurate physics, then lunch and spending the rest of the day in library.

On the fourth morning, when Mr. Wingdings finished up his breakfast, he vanished as quickly as he did on the first work day, but he left a little black box next to Sans' plate. It had three tiny slits on it, the use of which Sans couldn't figure out until he was suddenly shocked by Mr. Wingdings' voice, albeit somewhat distorted, coming out of that box. "Little Sans! Are you there?" He was perplexed by what was happening. He had seen no such thing before. In fact, he had no idea what was happening. Was he communicating to him from another realm? Did he shrink himself down and hide in that box? He considered anything possible, the way things were. "If you can hear me, please wave once." It couldn't do any harm to follow suit. "Good. Now listen, before we get to work, I need to test your capacity to independently navigate through the lab, at least through a specific path within it. Now don't worry, I may not be there, but from where I am, I can see every step you take and will warn you ahead of time if you're about to do something dangerous. I want you to - strictly from memory - try to go back to the library." This bit was easy. "Okay, now head back to the kitchen and to your tutoring room." This time, he got interrupted when he was about to take a wrong turn. After that one correction, he did arrive at his destination though. "Almost perfect, just remember to turn left next time."

Other than that, the days started keeping their rhythm. The next two days that followed were part of the weekend, where they would both skip work and take trips to all the strange places the vicinity of New Home had to offer. On week days, they would resume work. Gaster was a tyrant. A smiling tyrant who only was one when it was time to be one. His lessons were like nothing Sans had experienced before. Two weeks later though, things were interrupted as they were about to start class. "All right, Sans, I think now it's time. Have you gotten comfortable with the Underground yet?"

"yes...maybe?"

"Then let's put that to the test, shall we? What if I told you, that you could learn the material much, much faster. And I don't mean twice or three times as fast-faster, I mean finishing and memorizing a book within two minutes or less-faster."

"and how would that work?"

"Well, we would have to head to the adaptation workbench and see if your creation was a real success?"

"i'm alive, aren't i?"

"Yes, but that only means that a skeleton was successfully created." He headed out and gestured Sans to follow. "You on the other hand, are not only that. You are the first prototype of the Adaptable Skeleton Mark One. Or emm kay one if you prefer. This means that - assuming it was a success, I have an array of spells and modifications prepared that I can install on your body to efficiently and intuitively use." He was led to a hall a few levels deeper, with another contraption. An enormous contraption with several tall and wide blocks of metal next to it. Above them hung the screens of a 'computer', and the contraption itself was a hospital bed with many panels surrounding it on the ground, dishes with thick needles pointing towards it, round spiral-shaped cords above and some more strange tools that hung down from the ceiling. "This is it. The adaptation workbench. The only problem is that the process of this installation is going to require continuous rewriting of the very core of your being again and again and again, so it will most likely be excruciatingly painful." He had made sure not to get to telling that to Sans, before he was strapped beyond hope to the hospital bed in the middle. "Imagine it like visiting the barber...and the dentist...at the same time...only worse."

"doctor, i'm scared." Out of nowhere, a bone appeared and flew through the room until it ricocheted off one of the flat bowls affixed to one of the tools on the floor.

"No need to worry, I just need your cooperation and a little time. It won't last forever. I just need to make the adjustments aaand. Done. Sans, I'm going to need you to concentrate. Whatever bones you're about to summon, you need to hold them still and make them go away. Remember what I told you. Make them stop and let them go. Now just hold still, this is for your own good." After finishing up, doing whatever he was doing on the computer, he walked to an enormous lever next to the blocks. He pulled it while laughing half-heartedly. If Sans had a heart, it was beating like crazy. But nothing happened. "All right, going to have to do it properly." After pulling the lever back to it's original position, he pulled it once more, and let out a long, shrill and terrifying laugh that felt like it made the walls vibrate.

Panels on the ground and in the ceiling slid aside, tools and mechanical hands extended from behind them and everything around started moving and aiming directly at Sans. Flashes of light and streaks of lighting shot at him from all directions, and at once he flinched and screamed, as it felt like the 'flesh' of his body was torn apart, each little piece individually, several times every second. As he panicked beyond belief and screamed off the top of his lungs, bones appeared all around and shot in all directions. Between screams he begged and pleaded for it to stop, but when he managed to look at his pale tormentor between twitches and cringes from the sheer pain that shot through every part of him at any moment, he was watching intently. Even between it all, it felt like something even worse, from his spine, was forcing, growing and tearing it's way through his body into his skull, filling out his left eye and causing another shock of pain that went through his head. Everything twisted, and he soon couldn't look any more. Suddenly, for some reason, his arm could free itself from the solid steel shackle that held it in place as if it was made of paper, but the rest of him couldn't. The bones were banging onto the machines and not alleviating but worsening the pain. He clenched his eyes shut and tried to picture them stopping. No, everything stopping. And within a moment, everything changed.

The pain was still there, but the lightning streaks and flashes that tore at his body were much less frequent, he could even quickly catch his breath between them. They kept coming, but he could somehow see the lightning from one of the needles slowly approach him all the way until it struck and hurt just as it always did. The bones came to a stop, but judging from everything else, including Dr. Gaster standing frozen in place, time had come to a near halt...somehow. After a few seconds of near-silence, everything resumed and he was subjected to the same relentless torture at it's full force. "It's working!" Slowly, but surely, and this time without the other skeleton freezing, the flashes and bolts started subsiding and with them, so did the pain for the most part. His mind was spinning and he kept screaming for it to stop. He could hear the bones of various sizes crash against all the walls. "Take deep breaths! Remember what I said! Focus on on.e the..o..t...h...e...r" Wingdings, hands stretched in his direction, froze up again, as did all the bones. It had to stop, it had to stop, it had to stop, it had to stop! He gave each one a look and wished for it to go away. To poof away if it had to. And soon, they did, one after the other, until eventually, barely any were left and the rest that were, vanished as the world accelerated. "Y...o...u...c..a.n. Do it...oh, it's already done. Wait, no!" He tore off the rest of the shackles just as easily as that one arm before and smashed right into that machine. He smashed and shot at it relentlessly and his hands were cutting through it's casing and it's insides like through butter. By the time he sagged down on the floor when the exhaustion kicked in, every piece of hardware in the hall was only bits and pieces. Dr. Gaster had fled and was peeking out from around the corner.

"what did you do to me?"

"Becoming strong means to suffer. I made you powerful, look! It worked!" The Doctor fetched a mirror and gave it to Sans, who was already striking out to hit him. "No, stop! Look in the mirror! Look in the mirror! What do you see?" His skull looked the same mostly, but his left pupil was replaced with the blinding light of a shining iris that was oscillating between blue and yellow. When he caught his breath and gradually settled down though, the light faded and soon made way for his white pupil to come back.

"what is this? what was that?" He wasn't sure whether this thing was friend or foe any more.

"The installation of at least one of the two adaptations was a full success. The Gaster-Nerator. Or in short, the G-Nerator. A self-operating power generator that harvests vacuum energy and converts it into magical power, to create a constant supply of immense power for you to use. It can boost your magic and all your physical efforts."

"gaster...nerator?"

"Your eye, you must have noticed. The blue light. That was it, that was the G-Nerator in your eye running." He ran his hand over his skull. He could feel something 'crawling' into his eye, but now that it was all over, the pain was gone, and his eye felt normal again. "It's a component of your body now. You're going to have to learn to control it, but apparently, anger or confusion inadvertently turns it on. As of yet."

He was regaining his strength and pushed himself up on his hands. "but why?"

"Well, for a start, are you in pain right now?"

"no..."

"But you got the power I promised. Well, one component of it."

"but it hurt a lot before!"

"But that doesn't matter any more, does it? It's over. Now get up. Let me see if you're really okay." He was hesitant to take the Doctor's hand. "Ow...ow let go!" The Doctor's body was...twitching. Sans didn't understand what was going on. "Wait, maybe it wasn't only one component. Sans, am I talking normally right now?"

"yes?"

"We're going to have to try both ways to see if the other component was installed. First, I want you to move in a circle in this room. And fast. Really fast. As fast as you can." He tried doing as told, but he was really exhausted and after half-hopping around in two circles, lost his stance again an sat down. "This isn't it, then. Now try and picture or wish very hard for everything to slow down and come to a stop." Sans was losing faith in the Doctor. In anything actually. But he did what he told. It wasn't like it made much of a difference. "Tell me if anything changes. Anything abou.t thi.s roo.m a.n..y...t...h...i" Something did change. The Doctor slowed down and was frozen in motion. He got up to crawl a little closer, and when he took a closer look, he noticed hew as moving. "...n..." Albeit very, very, very slowly. When things got faster again, it felt like he had been holding onto something with all of his might before and he was now feeling the relief of letting it go.

"Wow, not so...fast. It must have worked. Tell me, did it seem like I was slowing down? Or like you were moving faster?" He affirmed the former. Without a single word spoken or sound made, slowly but this time without any effort on Sans' part, the Doctor's smiling mouth and open eyes were widening further and further with either joy or enthusiasm. When he did speak up, he got up at once and headed straight for Sans to shake him by the shoulders with both hands. "It worked! Both did! It really did! A complete success." He was confused, which didn't go unnoticed. "Allow me to explain. The other component was the power converter. It allows your body to freely convert your power to enhance any aspect of your body. The most time-consuming part of this was to allow for speed. You can turn as much power as you like into speed and move at velocities that no-one else can. When you imagined everything stopping, I wasn't slowing down, you were getting faster."

"you mean, like a horse?"

The slender skeleton raised his head and grinned down. "I would believe it gets a bit faster than that. But, what is to add is that while you can convert it to speed, as you can see from your...rampage..." He looked around and nodded to all the machinery that Sans had destroyed. "you can also turn it into strength. In the coming days, it would probably be best if you experimented with your new abilities. The sooner you can use your power converter to maintain high speeds and train your body to improve the efficiency, the sooner you can magnify your speed at catching up with your material."


	25. a matter of tem

.

A Doctor's Duty

Chapter 14

a matter of tem

* * *

Dr. Gaster had broken Sans' trust. At first. But as the weeks and months passed with no more incidents of that nature, and him dedicating so much of each week day to home-schooling Sans and then all of his weekends to going out to cheer him up and have fun, he gradually regained it. To add to that, he told him everything. From personal stories, all the way to what that 'long story' he kept mentioning was. Among other things, his ceaseless hurt and thirst for revenge on the centaurs for what they did and who they helped. Sans got to know him not just as a simple good or bad man, but as a person with bright and dark sides to him and came to understand the motive and the intent behind every action he took. All the more, he started trusting him, when Wingdings was defending his dedication to Sans' training and preparation. Whenever he asked, why he had it, the only answer he got was that he saw that same immense potential in Sans that came, among other things, from what he was and what he could do. If Sans didn't know better, it wasn't so much because he was this 'Adaptable Skeleton MK 1' thing, Wingdings was always talking about, and rather simply because he was another skeleton. The only other skeleton. The only person who knew what it was like to be a Monster AND what it was like to be human. Even though judging from his size, he probably had a bit more experience with the latter than Sans did.

They did spend quite some time trying to train his newfound abilities. Turning fast was easy, what needed concentration and practise in front of a mirror was to keep this thing in his eye running. To make it worse, when he did succeed at it, it didn't make work easier, it made it harder. Well, not so much more difficult, it was just that him reading through material and solving problems faster appeared to him like he was simply working longer, but with less time passing for everyone else. To his regret though, the Doctor had good intuition and could tell when Sans was deliberately using his power to a lesser degree than he could have. The further his understanding in one subject reached, the more Dr. Gaster branched out and started adding more subjects. One reason he later found out, why he did all of this, was because while Sans probably wasn't going to age and was immortal as far as aging went, that didn't go for most of the other lab assistants, so he could only have them understand so much before they would either quit or reach the limit of what they could learn while simultaneously working.

He grew closer with Wingdings as the months passed and their trips took longer and longer, occasionally turning into little adventures, one into an area that was harder to believe than the previous one. And whether it was something as trivial as a spell he needed to teach someone, or to fetch some piece of equipment he had lying around, whenever someone they met on their journeys had some problem, be it minor or life-threatening, Dr. Gaster always found some way to save the day. After a year had passed, Sans had long gotten into advanced engineering and they came back from one more adventure through the wailing gorge, an entire area that was actually one big monster. to relieve it of a pain that had been plaguing them for ages, they would come back home to later meet someone Sans regretted meeting. The herald of the Doctor's eventual demise would come in form of a tiny and adorable creature.

"And that, little Sans, is why you always have to stack the greasy books above the clean ones." Sans had come to laugh at each of his counterintuitive lessons, but when that subsided, he went on to press for something he had been wondering for quite a while.

"say, why is it actually, that you have all this knowledge and all these - things - here, and no-one else has? no place seems as - magical? as this one?"

Dr. Gaster smirked and raised a finger. "What you mean to say is 'technologically advanced'. All the other places are magical. If anything, this is the one place that isn't. For the most part at least. The reason why is as simple as it is complicated. All technology neither works nor lasts without the know-how to operate or maintain it. I am here for the lab and the CORE. And I have my lab assistants I can train to help maintain things to a degree, but suppose I produce a complete and functional dish washing machine that automatically washes all the dishes and handed it out. And Monsters from near and far would take them and use them. For one, the usage would probably require materials I would have to constantly produce en masse, just so that they aren't completely useless. Then a lot of the time, they would probably wear out or get broken, and because I'm among the only ones who know how they work, there would be no-one available to fix it."

"there's you."

"I'm not going to produce masses and masses of housing utensils, just so I then have to spend all my time repairing them all. There are more important things to do."

"like going on vacation every week?"

"Exactly. So all I can do, is to have many different devices available here and to use them to help others myself, wherever possible. With machinery as advanced as what I'm producing, it's the only way right now. Who knows, depending on your progress, that might change." When Sans understood, the two of them started pointing at each other and making a questioning sound at a higher and higher pitch, but Wingdings had a naturally higher voice, so there was no way he could really win this. It was fun to do anyway. "Well aside from that, something you probably haven't ever really understood is that under natural circumstances, I could never have all of this. Even after the centuries that passed. I simply lack the personnel, and any personnel I had lacked the lifespan to gradually amass the scientific knowledge necessary to make any of this ourselves. By far most of what I do is apply knowledge I was given."

"given by whom?"

"h0i!" A little fluffy thing appeared on the table. Sans had seen some in Waterfall already.

"hello, temmie."

"dogtah, iz TEM! hao far iz blast0rz?"

From how he shuddered and shook his head to assure himself that he hadn't misheard the half-dog, it seemed like Dr. Gaster was completely taken by surprise by this. "Blasters? How do you even know about them?"

"what's a blaster?"

He was irritated and waved the prospect aside. "Oh, it's just an idea I had a few weeks ago. I never mentioned or wrote it down, so hell if I know where they know it from."

The Temmie vibrated more and more. "iz srs, u nid blast0rz. and u nid TEM masheen"

Sans wasn't quite understanding what was going on, it seemed to involve rough estimates of what was possible. This shook up Mr. Wingdings even more than the blasters. "What? I can barely make remotely efficient, self-sustaining zero-point generators. How am I going to make a functioning time machine?"

"u has les dan n0inty yeers. we haf prepaerd TEM studis."

"tem studies?", Sans asked.

The annoyed skeleton grunted while leaned on one arm and buried his face in it's hand. "All study courses in the Temmies' college have the exact same name. They're all called Tem studies. You need to put together from the individual curriculum, which one is which. If she says 'we prepared tem studies', this means that they prepared our introduction in the material for whatever context they're talking in. And she brought up time travel. So whatever they want to fill my head with this time, it relates to time travel."

"anD g4st0r blast0rz.", the little puppycat interjected with a raised paw.

Wingdings eyed the Temmie with narrowing eyesockets. "...And Gaster Blasters."

"what's going on? are you saying the temmies can do that?"

The taller skeleton took a deep breath, and then went on without even facing Sans. "Who do you think gave me the know-how to make all of this?" He pointed at the surrounding room, but it was pretty clear that he meant the entire laboratory. He started to understand and just pointed at the little creature with an empty look. Which was met with a very insistent one. "Yes." For a few seconds, in which everyone else was silent, he stepped in place with his foot on the floor, until he raised his head. "Temmie." She turned to him. "I agree to whatever you're on about. Fully. But under one condition. Prepare TEM studies for two."

* * *

Hesitant and unsure about where this would lead, Sans followed Dr, Gaster through a mossy dark cave in Waterfall. It was pitch black and only illuminated through short-lived pink crystals and from time to time, he had to rely on his hearing to not get lost. "You know, when I said computers and other things were modified Temmie tech, I wasn't joking or exaggerating. Temmies are - oof." Wingdings bumped into a wall he didn't see. "Temmies are an ancient race, as old as sentient life itself. That's why they're said to have created the universe. All of you and me helping others throughout the Underground, is essentially just them helping others and using us as proxies, because they prefer not to get involved. Either that or a byproduct of me helping others here around New home. Nevertheless, if they bother to get involved like this and invite us to their home, that means that whatever they're on about is really important and we need to at least try to help." The way through the next cave was much easier, as the power of mushrooms illuminated their path. In one corner of this cave though, the older skeleton took a turn that the lights on the ground weren't pointing to. "This way. Temmies like to have several layers of security. Their constant one is of course how they talk. Another one is the location of their village.

It looked to Sans like they were venturing into complete blackness and he was following more and more slowly. But once they were far enough to be in absolutely nothing, the black and white shape of Mr. Windings seemed to just vanish. Sans stopped to try and wrap his head around what happened, but his thoughts were interrupted by a familiar face peeking out of the knowledge. "Go on, just follow along, we're almost there." When Sans came closer to where Dr. Gaster had disappeared, he stretched out his hand. His hand disappeared, but he could pull it back and it was there again. He eventually took one more deep breath and stepped through completely. As if it was hidden behind some sort of curtain, behind the nothingness lay another ordinary cave from the looks of it. Temmies were sitting around and walking left and right. A statue of a Temmie and a painting of a Temmie riding some sort of sea serpent.

"Yaya!" He was startled while examining the painting by one of the creatures that approached him. "dis iz temmie triamf ovur sea dragonz. h0i. im T3mmie!1" He suspected that he was expected to shake her raised paw, so he did. "welkam 2 Temmie vil lag." This was when more Temmies joined in to greet him.

"h0i! im Temmie!"

"h0i. im temmiy."

"h0i, we r teh temz."

"Hello. My name - ouch." One of the other Temmies 'punched' the last one with her front paw. " - I mean h0i. i'm Temmie."

In the background and impossible to tell from where, it sounded like several people were singing a looped tune. On the other side of the room stood Dr. Gaster, with a packed bag in hand and patiently waiting for Sans to come along, but he didn't really understand what for at the time. There was nothing there. He was just standing in front of a crack on the wall. When Sans was about to say just that, he noticed that there was another Temmie peeking out from that same crack. Once Sans was in front of it, googly eyes sprung out of it and it vibrated immensely. "b0i. too skelet4ns. all teh bettur!" It gave them a wink and with strangely little sound, the wall parted and the crack first reached all the way to the floor and then grew wider and wider for the two of them to step through. Once they were past it though, it closed right again and the Temmie that had been looking at them from behind it, jumped off and head further into the dark room behind the wall.

All the way down the room was something. It looked like a little shack, or a tool shed. Rusty on the side, ailing and in disrepair. Not very impressive. The Temmie bounced past them and behind the shed. What Sans heard it doing was a recollection of the same sounds he heard when Wingdings was operating some electronic device and pushing buttons. "nao u can has studis in cool leg." She came back to open the shack's door and accompany the two of them on their way through it.

It was a sunny day with a clear, blue sky outside. "uh..."But they were just in the Underground a second ago! Startled and unable to figure out what just happened, he turned around to see another identical shack, the door of which was closing. He would have been alarmed, but the place they were brought to was empty and didn't look dangerous or like some sort of trap at all. It was a wide open square with a few trees. They stood on clean and even pavement that stretched all the way to a small, distant road with a grotesque-looking city behind it and shun in bright beige in the sunlight. There was sunlight! Even a sun! "what - but how? are we back on the surface?"

Wingdings didn't seem surprised at any of this in the faintest. "This isn't the sun. It's an optical illusion. We're probably not in Temmie Village any more, but we might still be somewhere in the Underground. When it comes to Temmies, you need to stop thinking spatially. Temmies can produce space. We could walk through a tunnel the size of a stadium and it could actually be the size of a straw on the outside. So for all that matters, we might as well still be in the little hut we just walked into. Welcome to Temmie College, the University of New Temmentia. This is where I got my Ph.D."

They were next to the shadow of an enormous, white complex. It was one huge building made of curved blocks that were stacked over each other so as to create a rough resemblance to a double spiral that extended into the sky. Behind the shadow of one of these curved blocks lay the wide stairs with fountains on both sides that were decorated with statues of Temmies in various poses. In big, and far-off readable letters it read 'coleg' above the glass entrance doors. When they got all the way on the stairs, the doors parted all on their own and allowed them to pass through without the faintest effort to open them. There was a snow white reception table with two Temmies sitting on it fidgeting on something that seemed to be neither on nor inside the table. It was more like they were intently staring and moving their paws at the table itself. "h0i." One of them looked up from what they were doing and greeted the two of them.

"I hear there is a course of Tem studies prepared for W. D. Gaster and Sans the skeleton."

While the Temmie hopped off the table and disappeared behind a sliding wall, Sans inspected his surroundings. There was nobody here. They were alone for the most part, and he couldn't help but ask why. "Studying here works a bit differently from whatever you think is going to happen. And Temmies don't even come here in the flesh oftentimes. They just vibrate their faces off their bodies and study here as disembodied faces, while the rest of them remains where they were. Some of them even do it the other way round." The receptionist came back with another Temmie and resumed whatever they were doing on the table, which turned out to be a very long, upwards-pointing screen that somehow allowed input by tapping and sliding along it.

"com with me!", the new face called and trotted ahead to a thin, circular staircase that led straight up. Wingdings wasn't kidding when he said what he said about how Temmies studied. Just one level higher up, faceless bodies and floating faces were moving between the doors and mostly ignored the two non-Temmie passerbys. It was a quite a trip at first, since their first destination was very high up. Eventually, the Temmie that was leading their way jumped up to pull the latch of a door, this latch was installed much higher than the other ones and made way for the first part of the building that wasn't either glass or completely white from top to bottom. From the door reached the wooden floor of a very narrow corridor with concrete walls and wooden doors to both sides. The doors were open and keys hung in their outside locks. "tek 2". The Temmie waited outside, but the two of them knew that rooms were meant by 'two'. The moment the bag was placed down and two keys were taken though, they were already called back outside. "nao wii can go st4rt."

Dr. Gaster didn't seem nearly as surprised as Sans. He didn't know how things went at university, but he was expecting them to get set up with their new home. "aren't we supposed to get settled in first?"

Wingdings shook his head, the Temmie didn't even dignify that with a response. "Our stay here might be a bit shorter than you think. Again, studying here works differently." They needed to take a few more staircases until a door opened and allowed them to enter a wide, dark and uneven hall that had steps between each third of it. Lengthy chairs were laid out at the walls, from which hung down strange helmets with various lights and cables that reached back and up the wall. "Well then, Sans. I better warn you first. This isn't going to be painful - physically that is. But it certainly will be...something." There were all matter of safety locks. bindings and attachable components they needed to put themselves in, before it started. A few Temmies came up from further below and fastened the belts and secured the locks, before they jumped up to pull down both 'helmets' and attach them to the skeletons' skulls. The older one sighed and grabbed the two safety bars to both his sides. "You better hold on." Dr. Gaster was morally ambiguous to say the least, but he was honest, so Sans did as he was told and grabbed the two bars at his sides.

What followed was overwhelming and strange. His mind felt like it was getting crushed, he felt exhausted, yet didn't fall asleep. He was flooded with endless thoughts he couldn't put a finger on. He had to tighten his grip at the bars, because whatever was happening to him was going through his entire body and causing him to involuntarily twitch and shake. When he finally formed a coherent thought, he noticed that he was having less random and obscure thoughts, and when he opened his eyes, he was drifting in an endless, gray sea. He wasn't nearly as distressed as he probably should have been. A piece of driftwood was gliding on the waves straight in his direction, with a Temmie looking straight at him. When it was right next to him, the driftwood and all the water froze in place, while the Temmie smiled down on him and simply said: "TEMMMMM" Upon hearing it, his entire self was drawn back into the never-ending rush of short and interrupted thoughts. In part it wasn't consciously, at least at first, but he eventually did come to use the powers that Dr. Gaster had given him. He could feel the power surging from his eye and made the world stop. At least as far as he could. As long as he maintained this, it wasn't over, but like this, it was much, much more bearable. Some of the things that coursed through his mind were images, but even like this, he only had a few moments to make out each one.

He just devoted all of his concentration to keeping what he was given running for as long as possible. Going through this answered one question to him. Sure, one or two minutes of physical pain hurt, but this went on for what was hours in actual time, and even longer in Sans-time. Being given special powers was nothing compared to this, but from circumstance, he figured that Mr. Wingdings had already been through this before. This torture really went on and on and on. He knew it would take longer from his point of view, if he sped himself up, but it became so much more bearable, that it turned into the ultimate exercise for his concentration. Several times, he would fall unconscious and have some bizarre dream that involved a Temmie each time, before he was brought back to this induced confusion, until finally the stream of information ended. It was an eternity, but when he pulled himself together and was fully awake again, he saw Wingdings sit there hanging down with an open, drooling mouth. He wondered what was worse, dragging out this...thing...whatever it was that happened the way he did, or be subjected to it with no means of slowing it down for a while, the way the other skeleton experienced it.

Two Temmies walked up to him and jumped to both his sides. "what're you doing to him?"

"He nids wek up drank." One of them was holding a teapot in her mouth and while the other pulled his head back and held it so that his open mouth was pointing up, the other one poured something into his mouth from the teapot. When they were finished, they both jumped to the floor, and one of them jumped one more time to give him a kick to the chest. At once with a deep, heaving breath he woke up choking for air. "lessin ov4r."

He buried his face in his hands and needed a minute to recollect himself. "Oh my goodness, even knowing what it's like doesn't prepare you. Little Sans are you..." He was surprised to see Sans the way he was. "You seem to take this a lot better." To respond to it, Sans tried to use what he learned during his predicament to consciously turn on his G-Nerator one more time and smile back at him with his menacing, blue iris. "Ah, I see. Of course." It took quite a bit longer, until Wingdings could safely stand on two legs again. Once he was done though, he showed Sans the way down to the cafeteria. They shared a cafeteria with the Temmies, so everything was Temmie-sized. They took trays along a long line, where they were filled with food and drink, but he couldn't discern what a single thing of them actually was. For example, all the drinks were just variants like 'blu jus' or 'grin jus'. They ended up sitting together at a table in the corner, together with the only thing that wasn't a Temmie. It was a beige dog with a broad snout, a bit shorter than Sans and with a curled tail. When they came closer, it first barked and then greeted them. "Wow, so human. Very pale." Beyond this one single sentence template, it didn't seem much up for conversation.

Every time Sans asked what the Temmies had done to them, Wingdings just put it off and told him to wait, so he could better explain it later. The food and his 'blu jus' wasn't just regular strange. It was advanced strange. He couldn't ever narrow down what either tasted like, but what he did notice, was that every time he ate from it, it changed it's taste completely. Every time, to the very last piece.

After lunch, Dr. Gaster led him into something akin to a class room where the walls were as white as everywhere, and the window was blurred, so you could for the most part only see the blue of the not-sky, and ran outside to fetch pens and paper, as well as one of his books from the big bag he had brought along. Before a single word was spoken, he wrote a very long and complicated equation on the black board. It took three solid lines of writing along the entire length of what he could write on and had divisions, brackets, exponents and all you could think of. "Now then, this equation should be completely impossible for you to solve. Under normal circumstances. We're not operating under normal circumstances though, right? If the normal was ever there before, it always ends, as soon as the Temmies extend their influence, and where is their influence greater than at the heart of where they share their knowledge with one another? Go ahead Sans. Try to solve it." Sans gave him a very questioning look, but Dr. Gaster seemed serious about this and just gestured him to take the chalk. "Go on, just read through the entire thing and then write the first thing that comes to mind. Don't question it, just do it." Okay then, there went nothing. "Exactly right!" What? "Look!" Wingdings pointed at the currently open page of the book that bore the equation and it's solution. The solution was exactly what Sans had written down. He made an effort to conceal the steps that lead to it for some reason. "You see? Do you know now, what the Temmies did?"

"no."

"This equation contains references to material you have long not had, and requires an experience solving them that you wouldn't have in ages. Normally. Luckily, all the knowledge you need to solve it was written directly into your long-term memory, like writing it on a disc. Which is why just solving it was the easy part. Their method of instilling knowledge bypasses the short-term memory though. You have, never consciously learned or applied what you now know. That is the more difficult part. Now take this equation and work out how you got to the solution. One way of doing this is to have me ask, why don't I for instance..." He copied the equation and added a faulty step from it. Sans objected to it, but this seemed to be exactly what the other skeleton wanted. "Yes, why is it wrong? Write down why." When he did, they repeated this. Wingdings would add one faulty step, and Sans one rule to correct it, again and again. "So, all these rules you wrote down, I never taught them to you and you didn't know them beforehand either. And now, look!" He turned many pages back. What he showed Sans was a page with a long list of rules. These rules, every single one of them, were the ones that Sans wrote down to correct Mr. Wingdings' wrong manipulations. All of them. They were even in the same order. "Now, unless the Temmies gave them to you, how did you know all these rules?"

He had a point. He seemed to have turned into a math genius overnight. Or in this case, overmorning. What this all meant was that he had to speed-read through all the books Wingdings had about this. Which required a short trip back to the Underground. The books all really only rattled down the exact same material he deep down knew, but in a form that allowed for human minds to consciously understand them. And from then on in, they came back into a very similar rhythm to before. First they would go through the same they had at the start. Knowing that someone was sharing his pain and his increasing capability to use his powers without error made the 'lesson' process much better than he first thought. And the rest of the days would consist of him 'catching up' on his newfound knowledge and Wingdings incessantly writing down what Sans soon came to understand was what Mr. Wingdings had learned that he didn't know before. This way, they spent no more than two months of studying several very broad scientific fields but at the rate and intensity of Temmies.

He was all the more relieved, when their studies were finally done. At least the part that took place at university. This relief made him all the more patient, when the two of them were packing their bags and wrapping up their stay at the counter on the ground level. "nao u haf degwee 2." One of the two Temmies at the table threw a black hat at Sans with a flat square at it's top. They were about to leave, when that same Temmie interrupted them one more time. "doger!"

"Yes?"

"teh ayyg of conbergins iz happining."

"what's that?"

They headed outside and made for the little shed that would lead them back to the Underground. "Apparently, not as unsubstantiated a myth as I thought. It's a prediction, or a prophesy. Humans come at varying degrees of determination. In by far most cases, it has no effect. Where the age of convergence comes into play, is the idea that there might or will be a time, where there is an unusual amount of humans with very high levels of determination occurring within an unusually short timeframe, peaking in at least one human with levels of determination that exceed the ultimate threshold. The power to turn back time. This might relate to what we need a time machine for. But how, will be impossible to tell until we have it. I guess you could say that time will tell."

Even their time in the college of New Temmentia didn't really change their schedule after they settled back at home. What changed was that instead of Wingdings teaching Sans material at their previous, comparably sneaking speed, he was first speed-reading the entire library, then reading up after the few manuscripts that Dr. Gaster had created ever since they first went to college. What changed for the most part was the other half of their days. They had less than a century to build a time machine. From scratch. Towards the assistants, they had framed their stay at college as an extra long vacation, but they were happy that they were seeing actual work done. Every day, the two skeletons sat together to conceptualize and draw out one after the other of many, many components they would need to make it work. One layer of security, albeit an unreliable one and probably just a new quirky habit of the Doctor's surfacing, was that he wrote down everything in a long, fixed set of symbols. Some were just hands pointing in directions, others were religious symbols from the surface, others were just squares and yet others were just tiny pictures of random things. It was easy to learn though, since it really was just a one-to-one reimagining of the exact same alphabet and numerical system they already used. The only ones who could possibly read it, because it was saved as a 'font' in the computer system, were the assistants.

Sure, they went to less lengthy trips, but from time to time, they would spend a weekend with a similar kind of holiday or adventure as they used to. He didn't need much of a change though. Their work was intense and demanding enough. Before Sans knew, they were spending way less time anywhere but in the lab, building, developing and improving one minor component of this behemoth of a project after the other, with occasional breaks in-between for Dr. Gaster to work a little on a pet project here and there. Sans first thought they would be working on this for a year, maybe a few years, before they first went to college, but afterwards, it seemed like even more than eight decades was a comparably narrow timeframe. At least for a team of two.

Sans was first a bit annoyed, maybe even rebellious at how Wingdings didn't treat him as a working partner, but an assistant and a child, though he couldn't deny to himself that he did indeed sort of have phases over time, often inspired by whatever the humans threw away and would land in the abyss. There was constable Sans first, then decades later, Superhero Sans because he was fascinated by the piles of comic books that were dumped to find in Waterfall and further down. Visually illustrated stories about humans with super powers, like his own speed and strength, wearing flashy costumes and fighting to save innocent yet oppressed and persecuted Elves and Orcs from the clutches of evil humans in brown uniforms. He even made himself an in hindsight very embarrassing costume to wear, and that he preferred not to talk about when he got older. This went for the whole superhero thing in general. The highest grade of fascination faded quickly, because he was quickly aware of the aggressive undertone of 'you must feel sorry for X/guilty towards X/you owe X, lest you be immoral' that permeated them, but he still liked the concept of people with absolute power using it to fight crime. His fascination with it grew all the smaller again, when Dr. Gaster reminded him that by the standard of having super powers and improving the lives of strangers on a regular basis, the two of them - or at least Sans alone - already was a superhero and while those fictional ones did have villains to up the ante, they may have not been as impressive as he first made them out to be.

After that, he inverted it into the much more mild greaser Sans, when what the humans inadvertently gave him to read were material on motorized vehicles and the clothing and lifestyle associated specifically with the passionate use of bikes. Sans even used his spare time to build himself a makeshift bike, but quickly realized that there was a reason why the Underground wasn't picking up on cars and bikes, namely that there weren't that many broad and long roads to properly use them on.

The one phase that probably stuck with him, but he toned it way, way down, was sparked by a single vhs cassette that he found in the water one day. So many decades had passed and the two of them were already finishing up the last parts of this all-demanding project of theirs, when whether by sheer coincidence or not, they found and restored a recently released human-made movie about a mad scientist and his young but hip sidekick dressed in a flashy jacket who were just about to complete and use a time machine and Sans found it absolutely hilarious that this happened just about when the exact same thing was actually really happening down here. He even started to dress like the sidekick. Of course, the film just presented the audience with the completed machine, while he and Wingdings were still several years away from finishing it and still had to field test one component after the other, and the doc had long started to work on his 'Gaster Blaster', even though Sans knew that it's completion and application would mean using that horrible machine they had rebuilt over the years again. Speaking of the Doc. "ya know, doc."

He looked annoyed, but he couldn't suppress his own grin at Sans' new way of addressing him. "Are you seriously just going to call me 'doc' from here on in, just because of a simplistic piece of entertainment?"

Sans shrugged. "why not? makes for a good nickname."

"Who chooses a car for a design of a time machine anyway? It's stupid and hazardous. It has to be able to fly through space, because the earth isn't static. It moves around. So if you're off even a little in regards to time, you probably won't end up on the earth's surface to begin with."

"you gotta admit though, it's pretty cool."

The doc sighed. "I suppose it is 'cool'." Over the decades, Sans' way of talking had changed a lot, but the doc's didn't the least bit. He at first didn't like it, but Sans knew exactly that it lightened up his mood.


	26. ribcage memory

A Doctor's Duty

Chapter 15

ribcage memory

* * *

As the two skeletons got closer and closer to completing their time machine, the doc started ditching all his little side projects and getting more and more obsessed with this particular one. The closer he got to running a test successfully, the less of a chance the next obstacle had at stopping him. At some point, Sans was just lazying about in his room, when he heard the first faint, then increasingly loud voice of the doc heading straight to him and knocking very loudly. "what? what?"

He stood in front of him with a wider smile than he had in a long time. In his hands was a little rabbit, they used rabbits to send on attempted time travels. "Look at Flopsy, little Sans!"

It was just a rabbit. He hesitated in case he noticed something odd. But there was nothing. "i don't get it."

"He's still alive. The first successful time traveler of the Underground!" Okay, if he had already run a test that involved this one, then this was a big deal after all. Most of the bunnies they used suffered a whole range of gruesome deaths, but this one didn't have a scratch. "Now it's time to test it on Agitha!" Agitha was a tarantula who's body was to a sufficient degree made of magic to test out their invention for how it affects Monsters. This was interesting enough for Sans to follow, and to their joy, Agitha came back unharmed as well. The doc carefully placed her cage on a distant table and rushed out of the room, sweeping from side to side as he lead the way. "No time to lose! Now that we're done testing whether test subjects can survive it, I can't wait to test it myself!"

"wouldn't we - ya know - need the time machine for that?" The point that he was making was that they had just been there, and they were heading to a completely different part of the lab.

"Yes, but before we can risk actually travelling anywhere ourselves, there is something we need first." They were heading to the high-tech conservation chambers, where particularly delicate objects and substances were stored. When Sans caught up, they were in one chamber with a vat of some substance enclosed in multiple casings which because the doc had pressed the right button, were opening and releasing themselves under the whooshing and fizzling of steam and cooling gas being released, as well as a vacuum getting filled with air and a few more conservation means opening themselves. Whatever was in this vat was old. Very old. Wayyyy old... "It's okay, Sans, we got the point! Now, you remember how you told me that you heard that same melody on the surface? The one I made up? The one you couldn't possibly know, it was impossible for you to know."

"lemme guess, it wasn't impossible."

"It couldn't have happened if it was. The music came from me. I was sending out coded impulses that interact with humans' determination. The only way you could hear it, even if only faintly in your head, was if you had very, very strong determination." In a dramatic fashion that was sorta diminished by the look of his face, he turned around to face the younger skeleton. "Seeing-through-time levels of determination to be exact! For all we know, you could have been the harbinger, the distant beginning of the convergence. You remember the giant mechanical goat skull on the bottom floor?"

"hard to forget."

"It's a replica of the very first piece of Temmie technology I ever came across with. The DT Extraction Machine. My dear friend Neferias could never be convinced to stop researching his one passion. Necromancy. He called it the soul burst ritual. An extremely detailed magical impulse that is led through a summoning circle and several stations that alter and accelerate it towards the soul of a human being to then detonate it, pulverize the human's body and start a chain reaction that results in the creation of a self-sustaining magical construct powered by what is left of their soul. These constructs - primitive artificial Monsters - were named after their appearance, which they had because the actual matter their bodies were created from, generally came from the bones of the human body."

"skeletons."

The doc's eyes sparkled. "Yes! His problem was that he could never perfect it though. No matter how hard he tried, no matter how much effort he put into making his creations more and more sophisticated, they were always floating piles of splinters and they always melted within a matter of hours at most."

"like a monster on determination overdose."

"Precisely." He said it! Sans couldn't help but smile and point at the doc, but the doc ignored it and went on. "Whenever he attempted to create a skeleton, the skeleton always ended up drawing in along with other matter from their body, the determination that coursed through it, so every skeleton he ever created was born on an overdose of determination. Until I died. As part of my last will, I donated my own body and soul for him to use for one more experiment. One more soul burst ritual with instructions and prepared materials to make it better and more stable than ever before. A simplified skull to make sure of that and including the use of the DT Extraction Machine. What the machine does, is to - for the brief duration of it's use - drain the human body or soul placed inside it of all it's determination and fill it in an externally stored container."

"so i'm guessing this one's the container. and then that stuff is..."

"The determination of a little human boy who's determination was so strong, that he could consciously perceive a wave that interacted with determination and determination alone. Your determination. And you are about to get a little bit of it back."

"and why?"

"Because, little Sans, for one, the convergence might be upon us. But that isn't the actual reason. The actual reason is that in very rare cases, the determination of a human being is strong enough to grant them - if they're determined enough - a range of abilities. It can restore their bodies, which is the reason most people that are that determined die of suicide, because that is the death that involves not wanting to survive. The very very most determined person - and such a person barely ever exists - can turn back time and try anything they feel they failed at again. But, the more important part is in-between. The less determined ones that are still very, very determined. They may not be able to turn back time, but their memories can resist the reassertion of time after the creation of a new timeline. Normal case, time gets turned back or new timeline gets created as result of time travel, and everyone remembers the new, altered timeline as if it was the only one that ever existed. But say there was a human that can turn back time. With this determination..." He filled a syringe he picked up from a tray on the side with some of the stuff in front of him. "...we can remember the course of time the way it was before it got changed. Imagine aforementioned determined human killed a person we knew ten years ago, and then turned back time to befriend them instead. Even in the timeline where they didn't, we would still remember the version where they killed them."

"that doesn't sound like a good thing."

"But it is. If that scenario were to happen and you wouldn't remember the timeline where they showed their true colours, what makes you so sure that whatever they're doing in the new timeline isn't the preparation for something even worse? Even if to the infantile mind it may seem so at first, it is never really for a person's own good, not to know or have experienced something. Knowledge is never bad." When Sans saw the doc's face twitch, he looked down to see him having pierced his upper arm with the syringe's needle and inject himself with his determination. After that, he switched the needle out for a new one and held it out to Sans. "Come here. It won't hurt a bit." When he, slowly and unsure about all this, came closer, he quickly felt that that was a lie. "I pierced your bone with a pointy object, of course it was going to hurt." He felt a lot better, when the needle was gone again and once it was removed, thanks to what his body was made of, any semblance of a wound disappeared instantly. "Now, we are ready for time travel. If I do anything wrong, and change something we don't want changed, we will remember what it was like, before I changed it. Now onwards! To the Time machine!"

When back in the room with the finished product, tested on specimens similar enough to what Wingdings was, and in spite of that very hesitantly, he approached the blocky contraption. "Oh goodie, I'm getting less and less sure about this, the closer it gets to actually doing it." It was big enough for him to sit in, but not much more than that. Sans could have sat inside, but the doc objected to it. "No. You are never absolutely sure. It's sure enough, you just never have a guarantee." Sans was all the less confident about this than the doc, he even called after him, but he knew that wouldn't work. The doc was - of all the things - determined to see this through. His skull nervously peeked out one more time. "Wish me luck and good bye, little Sans. If anything goes wrong, I leave everything for you. Just don't do anything I wouldn't do. When I come back, I will as an official time traveler!" Sans wasn't sure who he was trying to encourage with this. He himself was feeling more and more queasy, when he saw the last bit of the doc's robe slide through the door before it was closed shut.

With loud droning and buzzing noises, a faint smoke appeared around the machine and slowly, it faded out - only to fade right back in before it was even really gone and the door slam open. "Oh goodness, oh goodness, by Asgore's growing beard what should I do?"

"doc! you're back."

He seemed not just alarmed, he was panicking and even threw down Agitha's cage in a fit of rage, almost breaking it and freeing her. "Of course I'm back, I hit the reverse button minutes after I left!" He was covering his face with his hands in either shame or helplessness. "There's got to be a...no, too far, too much precision required. But how? What should I do?"

Sans couldn't keep watching this, maybe he could somehow help. "what's happened?"

He was immediately shouted at. "My LOVE went up, that's what happened! I killed a man!"

"why?"

"I didn't mean to, I materialized right in his way and it was too late before I knew what was happening! Look!" He reached inside, pulled out a severed human head and held it by it's long, blonde hair. "Oh goodness, I'm a murderer, everything I build ends up killing humans!" Yes, but in that case, it was an accident both times. He was pacing back and forth, from how Sans knew him, he was looking for a solution. "Heal body? How? No human hospitals here. No human hospitals can undo this. Even if there were ones so far in the future that they somehow could, they would just ask me to drop it - maybe if we put him in stasis until we have what we need down here - prolonged exposure of dead human to Monsters."

"monsters?"

"The assistants! What do you think an aldracor like kid would do if he got his hands on this man's soul? Not even kid would know. Do you have any idea how ferocious people like him get when they grow up? Imagine that instantly." He snapped his fingers. "With the power of a human soul and the mind of a child! The regular use of his hands would be the least of our worries."

"not very good."

"To put it more than lightly, yes! Not. Very. Good!" The doc nodded on each of the last three words.

"how about going back in time to stop you from doing it?"

The hand that wasn't holding the head was supporting itself on his hips. "Yes, good idea, let's use the already finished time machine to go back in time and prevent ourselves from finishing that same time machine. That's certainly not going to cause an unpredictable paradox. One rule of time travel: Never go back to directly alter your own timeline unless you witnessed the potentially altered version the first time round, in which case you are not altering it at all. Or in other words, unless you were first visited by your future self, don't visit your past self."

"how about just bring him back to the surface and bury him?"

"That's not helping, Sans." He was visibly enraged, but Sans could figure that he was angry at himself. "No, you know what, before I just let him stay dead, I will rather take a risk." Oh no. "I can't cure death. But I can treat it!" Oh no, please, he couldn't be gonna. "Yes! Yes I am!" It seemed he could read Sans' discontentment from the expression on his skull. "The soul burst ritual! He will be the prototype for the Adaptable Skeleton MK II!"

Sans tried to wave the doc's thoughts away with both hands and took a decisive step towards him. "we can't just turn every human that comes here into a skeleton."

"We can if they die and until Asgore changes his mind. Besides, if I go and test this time machine further, if something happens to me, what about you? You're all on your own. What would you say about another skeleton being here?"

"aren't we kinda ripping him outta his own life?"

The doc's eyes narrowed for a few seconds. "I see what you did there. But he already is - ripped - out of his life. Right now the two choices are A: He stays completely dead and B: He comes back to life but as a Monster. I'm given the choice between forsaking a life or conditionally saving it. There are more than enough humans that will die, let me just bring the one back who's death was my fault."

There really was no way of convincing him. "all right, all right. so whadda we need?"

"For a start, we need gloves, and then we need to get his body to the bottom floor. Ugh...I'll be happy when all this is over." He was audibly disgusted by the blood that was getting everywhere from the dripping head and the leaking neck from the headless body that was still seated in his time machine.

* * *

It was new to Sans and felt strange, seeing this whole occult approach being taken in the same complex where they otherwise operated strictly scientifically. It wasn't that it was unscientific, he knew that, it only seemed like that, because it bore resemblance to the stuff that superstitious mystics would do. Not that Sans had ever seen any, he only went from stuff he had read. The doc continued while he was laying out transparent glass prisms on the ground and on cables that required using the assembly chamber to create because of the level of precision it needed to make them the way they were. "When I materialized on the surface, it appears he was speeding right below, we were moving in opposite directions, and because his car had no roof, he went straight with the neck to the lower edge of the machine and then..." He made a gesture that meant a more or less clean cut between head and torso, and Sans would have preferred to be spared the details.

"are ya really, really sure about this?"

"Yes."

"you wanna blow up his soul and hope it makes a new monster body?"

"Was attempted twice with this procedure, and succeeded both times." He inspected a prism that had a crack and carelessly threw it away before fetching a new one. It splintered all across the floor and required the two of them to pick up the pieces.

"won't we have to replace all this stuff?" He was referring to three valuable pieces of equipment that were involved in making the whole thing work.

"A little price to pay for a saved life." He tightened all the cables and searched the poor man's pockets one more time before heading back to the machines to calibrate them and load his pre-written impulse. He thought he would be waiting here for quite a while, but after a few mere seconds, the doc pushed a button and grabbed Sans' wrist. "Done. Now run!" They started off with him startled and getting dragged along, but he could luckily outpace the rattled scientist and be himself the one who pulled forward. Before he expected it, a thundering explosion could be heard that must have trashed the entire place.

When they slowly approached the site, bits and pieces of metal and glass spread all across the charred walls, something was groaning and rubbing his skull in the middle of the room. "UGH, WHAT HAPPENED?" This new - as of yet naked - skeleton spoke with a louder and slightly more...shrill voice and looked yet a bit more like an actual skeleton than Sans, at least his lengthy skull did with how it's jaws were open to the side, displaying his teeth at all times, while Sans still had some sort of bone-ey 'lips' covering his when he closed his mouth.

"Conscious upon creation. Interesting." The doc hid both hands behind his back and neared their new friend with soft steps. "Hello. I'm the Doctor."

The new skeleton was at first a bit perplexed. Understandable, he was approached by two walking skeletons, one who had basically a cracked mask for a face and a black robe with a white scarf for clothes, and one who was dressed all in jeans with an orange vest over his jeans jacket. When he caught himself though, he stretched out his hand to greet the two. "HELLO, DOCTOR. I'M..." He paused and looked off to the side. "I DON'T EVEN KNOW."

"You don't know who you are?" He was asking this with an inquiring voice. He was suspending his judgement until he had more information. "What do you remember? What is the last thing you remember, that happened?"

Their newcomer had no pupils, at least no visible ones, but you could tell his helpless expression from the shape of his eyesockets and from how he curved his mouth. "I WAS...I WAS..." He scratched the lower end of his jaws, where usually his chin would be. "I'VE FORGOTTEN."

Maybe Sans could try and break the ice with what little he learned from the entertainment that humans threw away, about what was possibly currently cool. "'sup, brah, everything fresh?"

It did catch his attention. "BRAH? ARE YOU MY BROTHER?" Sans exchanged looks with the doc, but from what it looked like, none of them knew where to go.

"sure, yeah. i'm your bro. you know my name?" That last bit got him a glare from Wingdings.

"I...I'M SORRY?"

"No need to be sorry." Wingdings stepped forward to try and help the skeleton on his feet. "After all, forgetting things is the point of an amnesia. Complete amnesia upon creation - something I'll have to note down. Now then, before we get caught up in more of this charade, I want to be hones..." Sans quickly covered his mouth. A quick exchange of looks - with how well they knew each other over the decades - carried an unspoken conversation that their friend couldn't decipher.

 _c'mon man, let's roll with this!_

We can't just leave him in ignorance about his predicament. He seems rather gullible and I don't want to take advantage of that.

 _hey, how well did i take it when you just outright told me? ignorance is bliss and all that_

A fallacious guideline, but fair enough. You have a point. Sans never got how they could communicate these kinds of complicated things without saying a word, but he figured it mostly evolved around deducing from the context. They brought him to an outer chamber, where they placed him on a chair. The doc headed up to fetch some stuff that belonged to him, leaving Sans alone with him. "SO, BROTHER, THERE IS NOTHING BEYOND GETTING TO KNOW EACH OTHER A SECOND TIME."

"sans." He was already looking at some little old device on a shelf in the corner. This guy sure had a short attention span.

"PARDON?"

"my name's sans. sans the skeleton."

They had put off shaking hands before, and caught up on that at this point. "THEN GREETINGS, SANS THE SKELETON." He paused and raised one of his eyesockets. "WHAT'S A SKELETON?"

Sans laughed. He didn't see that coming, even though it was obvious. He left himself to bring his 'brother' a mirror to look into. "i'm a skeleton, you're a skeleton, even the doc's a skeleton."

"GOOD TO KNOW."

The door flung open and the doc came back with a tray full of all range of things. "I am pretty sure the name..." He pulled up a little plastic card with lots of things printed on it and examined it closely. "Jeff Woolsey should be of pretty big importance to you."

"NEVER HEARD THAT NAME IN MY LIFE."

"Sans..." He mumbled through a half-open mouth. When he came over, Sans was shown the card he was reading off. All matter of data on this guy was printed on it, like it was a human identity card or something like that. But it was pretty easy to tell that the guy who's remains and soul were used to create the skeleton seated in the corner was the one on the photo. "You get the point, don't you?" Neither knew where to go from there, so the doc just pulled up more stuff. "Come on, you must remember it, try harder. Jeff Woolsey, are you sure that name doesn't ring a bell, deep down?"

"ABSOLUTELY NOT."

The doc just started going through random things that weren't his passport or other kinds of ID of the same name. Letters, documents, anything he could find. "Ashley Hartman?"

"NOPE."

"Mick Reinfield."

"NO BELLS RUNG, WHATSOEVER." He did remember figures of speech though.

He pulled out a police badge. "Enkate City Police Department?"

"NOTHING."

The doc turned a bit desperate and picked up something bigger that looked familiar to Sans in it's format. "The Great Papyrus?"

Jeff's eyesockets sprung open. "PAPYRUS?"

Wingdings' eyesockets narrowed and the corners of his mouth lowered. "Wait, you forgot your colleagues, but the comic you remember?"

"YES, I REMEMBER THAT NAME! IT MUST BE MY NAME THEN!"

"I'm pretty sure that isn't your name."

"IT MUST BE! 'THE GREAT PAPYRUS' STIRS SOMETHING." Sans of course knew that the doc was probably right and that wasn't his name, seeing as everything with his human face had 'Jeff's name. He tilted his head, gave Sans a distinct look and showed him what was a small issue of a graphic novel about a dark-skinned, thin man in white clothing standing in a desert with a sabre in his hand. He pointed at the author and artist's name, both of which were Jeff Woolsey. Jeff - or now 'Papyrus' got off his chair, placed his fists on his pelvis and faced the ceiling as if he were looking up at the sky to try calling it out. "IT IS I! THE GREAT PAPYRUS! YES! THIS DEFINITELY FEELS RIGHT TO ME!"

With his mouth frowned and pulled to the side, the doc slammed the tray on the table. He probably would have snorted loudly, if he had such a thing as a nose. Or a nosehole. "All right then, let's just go with that. Welcome back to the living, Papyrus. My name is Doctor Wayne Duncan Gaster."

Papyrus grabbed the doc's hand with both of his own and shook it with enthusiasm. "A PLEASURE TO MEET YOU, DOCTOR GASTER! ARE YOU MY BROTHER AS WELL?"

The doc's tone was getting a bit cynical, but Sans was happy to see him roll with it. "Oh no, that goes strictly for little Sans."

"YOU SAID WELCOME BACK TO THE LIVING. WAS I IN DANGER?"

The doc nodded. "I guess you could say that."

"OH GOD, I'M SO SORRY. YOU MUST HAVE BEEN SO WORRIED, SANS. FEAR NOT, I AM UP AND ALIVE."

Sans gave him a wink with both hands. "yes. you. are."

"THAT MUST BE THANKS TO YOU, DOCTOR. THANK YOU SO MUCH."

The doc was understandably skeptic about this whole setup. He played along regardless. "I presume that would be so, my pleasure. Now - Papyrus - do you feel all right? Any physical ills?"

Papyrus felt along his rib cage, his legs, his pelvis, his bladebones, and across his skull. "I DON'T THINK SO." The two of them proceeded to show Papyrus around the place, like the doc had with Sans. First they took some of the clothes their feline assistant had hanging, while the doc put on a new set of robes. They gave him a room next to Sans', tried some of the strange dishes that changed with the roster of their lab assistants and when it was about to get to introducing him to work..."SO WHAT DO YOU DO HERE, ACTUALLY?"

Sans interrupted the doc with a single word. "science. we do science."

"OKAY THEN, LET'S DO SCIENCE!"

This lightened up the doc's mood. "I'm growing fond of you."

They walked on with a few seconds of silence. "HOW DO YOU DO SCIENCE?" And at once, the doc buried his face in his open palm.

* * *

They had separated, so that Sans could show Papyrus around the place some more. It would have been pretty boring for their newcomer to stand around and watch while either the doc or both he and Sans were working on the time machine. When they were sitting in the kitchen, the doc finally came back, albeit wearing completely different clothes and wiping his hands with a little towel which he threw to the side. "All right, done. Fine-tuned the navigation system, then I tested it one or two...hundred times, stopped by a distant future workshop to work on it and I may or may not have inspired a tv show in nineteen sixty-three, I'll have to visit one particular place more often to be certain whether I did."

"SO, IS IT TIME TO DO SCIENCE?"

The doc faced him with a gradually widening smile. "Yes. It is finally time to do science." Papyrus for the most part became a tag-along that they showed what they were making to. Which in this case meant the doc making it and Sans tagging along as well a lot of the time. With their really big project finally done and ready for whatever the Temmies needed them to have it for, the doc started relapsing into his hold habits. Overtly silly, sometimes cartoonish mannerisms and sporadically working on a lot of things at the same time, rather than concentrating one one thing, and somehow yet constantly having something finished to show to them. He wasn't just turning into the good old doc, he was becoming a caricature of himself. Every time he came back from some trips with his time machine, he started working on inventing new things to fill the lab with faster and faster. And every time something was done, he couldn't bear to wait to show to the two of them.

Of course he wasn't always absolutely thrilled, there were failures. He angrily smashed a clipboard on the table and pointed at the bullet-proof glass container. "Nope, this was definitely a dead end. Test subject is psychologically labile. We can't kill her, but we have to keep her locked up here, too, in case she turns homicidal." While the doc walked away, a walking blender was rubbing her plug along the glass she was trapped in and planted a kiss on it in Sans' direction. The doc threw away the other notebook he had on him as well. "No point in further research. Romantic attraction will forever be an unattainable emotion for artificial Monsters. If no-one else, Yandereblender's instability shows that. In hindsight a stupid idea. We don't reproduce anyway. Creating artificial Monsters with romantic attraction, what in the world was I thinking?"

A lot of other times, he would look for them and ask them to come so insistently, you'd think something was on fire, but it was only to show them something new. "Quick! You've got to see this?" Already out of breath, Papyrus asked what it was. "The CATS."

"CATS? I LOVE CATS!"

"No, not cats, the contained and temporary singularity." He led them into one of several well-lit chambers where he was conducting tests with sophisticated equipment under high security measures to contain whatever was inside. Several layers of transparent containment units were layered around each other to cut them off from whatever was in there. What was inside was a black, tube-shaped object that had something to it, that Sans probably could explain to himself if he knew the context. It did have a certain, three-dimensional form, telling from looking at it from different angles, but no matter what angle he examined it from, it looked like a flat, two-dimensional surface pointed in his direction that was completely black. The doc scrolled through a feed of results on a screen. "I am currently measuring whether I'm getting it right. The more light it absorbs, the closer it gets to the desired effect." A rough idea of where this was going dawned on Sans, but Papyrus of course listened without knowing what it was about. "The success of it's creation and whether I can use it to proceed to the next experiment, depends on how dark it gets. It's already darker than a Monster eye could see. So if I dial up the intensity...Dark, darker, yet darker, the darkness keeps growing." He was growing more and more excited the further he dialed the device. "The shadows cutting deeper, photon readings negative! This next Experiment seems very, very interesting!" He turned around to face the two. "What do you two think?"

"I'M STILL AT A LOSS."

The doc spread out his arms and started accompanying what he was saying with gestures. "It's a weapon. A device that creates a mobile containment field and compresses all matter within it into a very weak singularity. So weak that it wouldn't exist under ordinary circumstances, yet once it does, it acts in many ways like a black hole, yet it is so weak that once you release it, all matter within is affected by pressure once again and diffuses with the appropriate force."

Sans raised a finger. "wait a minute. doesn't that mean that the moment you turn this off, this whole room's gonna blow up."

"WHAT?"

The doc just slowly nodded along without saying anything as if he was thinking about something way less substantial than the imminent threat they were currently in. "Yeah, we - uh - might want to evacuate the area before this causes unnecessary damage." What didn't need saying was that the damage the explosion caused wasn't necessary either way.

One day, Sans ended up wandering the lab alone. The doc had sent Papyrus and kid off for some time outside and had one assistant, who was just one large face, keep an eye out for them. He wasn't wandering around randomly, he just wasn't in a big hurry to get where he was going. Couldn't stop him from eventually reaching it though. The big hall, laid out with metal panels to all sides all the way up, and with a - not in a good way - familiar machine on the left side. "so whaddya got?" It was time to use the adaptation workbench again. The doc had finished the preparation for the Gaster Blaster, and apparently for more than that. He was already standing ready and in front of the rebuilt console of the machine.

"I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that this next installation process is going to demand a lot of conscious effort and self-discipline. The good news is that I have not one but four spells to install."

"what would those be?"

"The one you really need to be concerned about is teleportation. If you teleport yourself away from the machine in the middle of the process, it will probably not work and leave lasting damages that can only be undone by removing incompletely installed adaptations. That means going through the whole thing twice."

"so i just gotta keep myself from zapping away?"

"Yes."

He stepped closer to the bed. It's shape, the many open and hidden tools around it, and the straps and chains invoked some bad memories. Not very long memories, just bad memories. But if the Temmies insisted that they needed Gaster Blasters, there probably was a really major reason for that. Better just get it over with. It was probably not gonna be so bad, now that he knew what he was getting into. He was wrong. It was every bit as bad. All the worse with him having to suppress his wish to be somewhere else, knowing that wishing it too hard would make him accidentally use his incomplete teleportation. What gave him strength though, was knowing that there was an end in sight. And after a short time, it was already over. He hadn't zapped away. The doc did float into the air for a few seconds though, that was kinda weird to see.

He came closer to undo the shackles and help Sans off the bed. "Now then, let's first test your secondary new abilities. Picture me going up. No, make me go up!" Sans didn't quite get what the doc meant, but he did it anyway. To give himself a bit of a mental leg up, he swished his hand upwards and imagined it directing the doc's movement. The slender skeleton instantly took on a blue tone, lost balance, 'fell' upwards and landed up on the ceiling. He first tried stepping in place and then walking a few steps. "Fantastic! Gravitational realignment is working! Now try and do the same thing but instead of the ceiling, with the wall. He again, pictured his hand directing Wingdings' movements and swung it to the wall at his side. The doc fell over, but again, after getting up, it was like he was standing on the floor, only that he wasn't. "Perfect. Look at me! I can walk on walls!" In a demonstrative march, he paced all the way to the floor and leaned against it, until Sans swung his hand down. It took a bit of concentration, but he soon realized, he had to mentally let go of the doc for it to really be off. "What this does is alter, how someone or something is affected by gravity fields. In our case, the earth's gravity field of course."

The doc checked something on the screen. "Right, next up is telekinesis. Try and make me float, but not all the way to the ceiling." It was okay, he had seen this in films. He just had to use the force. Figuring it out took a little longer than that last thing where the doc turned blue, but he then realised that this made him blue as well. He imagined his hand physically grabbing from his distance, the small-looking shape of Wingdings and applying force to lift him up. This was what worked. "Wonderful, application of telekinesis was a success! Next up is teleportation." He imagined himself being on the other side of the room and consciously made it happen. Which he then was. And did the same again to get back to where he started. "Hm, okay, would have imagined this a little more spectacular. All right. Now comes the Gaster Blaster. But first, I would rather stand." Sans took that as his cue to gently lower him and let go again.

"Thank you, if you would come around here." What Sans saw, when he headed behind the console, was the screen depicting an animated image of a strange floating, lengthy animal skull with shining irises and a lower jaw that could part like that of an insect. When it did, a solid white beam shot out of it's mouth. "This is what it looks like. I don't know how you use it though. It emits a constant stream of magical waves that interact with any surface like thinned out antiparticles colliding with matter. Imagine it as a huge amount of extremely small explosions..."

"i know what ya mean." Sans took a step back, cracked his knuckles, raised his open hand and...did absolutely nothing.

Wingdings stepped in place and tilted his head. "Hm, earlier applied adaptations were initially emotion-driven. Maybe what it needs is an emotion. Pick a wall, preferably not this one." He pointed at the one behind him. Sans raised his hand towards the one opposite of it. "Now, if there is anyone in the world that you have ever absolutely not liked, hated even, despised. Imagine the wall to be them." He could think of someone. A whole category of people. In fact, he could think of entire rows over rows over streets full of houses, each with entire families, none of which he would spare if he lost control of himself with such a power. "And make yourself clear that you have the power to destroy them. To completely obliterate them! You can crush them if only you want to! Feel your anger and unleash it to them at full force!"

Suddenly, first one, then two, then three, then a whole slew - they must have been more than thirty at once - of these things appeared, and fired their ear-shattering attack at the wall. Both skeletons had to cover their eyes and look away. When the blasters disappeared, there was no wall any more. In fact a large part of the interior behind the wall was gone as well. "All right, why stop at one wing of the lab if we can order repairs for this part as well. Beautiful work, Sans, I'm off making some phone calls."

The last few years together were actually even better than the times they had before. Sans had a whole little three-headed family to spend time with, marvel at all of Dr. Gaster's inventions, go to vacations with, and with Papyrus, he not only got to enjoy it as the one who saw and discovered things, but he also had the joy of showing them to someone else.


	27. the man who never was

A Doctor's Duty

Chapter 16

the man who never was

* * *

Something that regularly happened ever since Papyrus had joined the two of them, was that the doc would sneak away at night and into the time machine. Sans did of course notice and he came back instantly every time, but it was a time machine. So there was no telling how long he was really gone. And he was probably gone for longer than the few seconds that it seemed like he was, because every time he went, he came back in a different costume. It wasn't hard to figure that they probably weren't costumes but appropriate and normal clothing from different times and places. At some point, Sans decided to take a closer look, while the doc was off somewhere else. What he found to his surprise, was that the doc wasn't kidding when he said that Temmies could create space. Their time machine, that used to just be a little box-shaped block with a bench that had barely space for two people, had gotten pretty roomy. A big console room to walk around in and swing up and down the railings with various screens rather than the one they had originally built in with task windows to open and close. And there were corridors that led somewhere else that he couldn't resist looking into.

The convoluted and hard-to discern complex deeper within did scream Dr. Gaster with how none of the rooms were ordered in any discernible way. Deeper inside, there eventually was a door that was locked. With an ordinary lock. Not an electromagnetic lock, not a retractable stasis lock, just an ordinary mechanical lock. Nothing you couldn't open with a pick-lock or telekinesis. It went easy enough though. He pushed the creaking door open. Behind it, chained to the opposite wall was something big. A six foot fall thing that looked a bit like a black pepper dispenser, but with a lamp at the top pointing forwards, as did something that looked like a plunger and a kitchen mixer. A gurgling and angry-sounding voice called out from it. "Unknown life form detected! Identify!" The thing was moving, and it's lamp was pointing straight at Sans. There was no mistaking that he was being addressed. "Scans indicate compository similarities with the Doctor!"

"yeah, i guess i got what it takes to be a..."

With as grim and self-confident a voice as before, it cut him right off. "You will be eliminated!" The end of the kitchen mixer started lighting up and fired a blinding flash straight his way. He almost failed to dodge it, and it left behind a melted spot in the solid steel wall behind the door. "Eliminate! Eliminate!" He stayed behind cover and listened to how it fired more and more of these light projectiles that were accompanied by loud, tinny noises. The way things were, he was pinned down though. The open door frame that was being covered in a barrage of this laser cannon that definitely wasn't a kitchen mixer, stood between him and the way out. He could have used his speed to run through at the right moment, but these things weren't like bullets, they flew way faster.

"Stay back!" With loud and hasty steps, the doc came trotting down the hallway with something in his hand. A black object that he clapped open. It was full of machinery inside and had a red-glowing arcane crystal in the middle, which was cut in a cylindrical shape that fit through the hole in his palm while he closed it around his hand before sealing it's outsides again. "All right, no need to worry. Everything is perfectly under control!", he said, while nervously adjusting something on the device's outside controls and the pepper dispenser was still shouting and firing it's lasers. "Adjusted delay and distance, aaand." Something started forming around his hand. Emitted from the black machine, pink glowing lines extended from inside and stretched out pretty far, gradually forming the contours and slightly transparent silhouette of some very long beam weapon. With it's full size, it clipped through the wall, but remained unfazed. "Upon the next word I say, we need to get away from here as fast as possible, can you do that?" Sans nodded and watched for what was happening next, keeping his G-Nerator on at all times.

The doc stretched out his hand through the door frame, and shouted: "Science!" Sans took that as his cue and sped off. From what it sounded like, that spectral weapon fired something, but he didn't waste any time looking what it was. He just grabbed the doc and sped way, way back to the console room. A massive explosion sent tremors through the very floor they were standing on, even all the way here. For quite some time, he could still hear solid metal crashing against solid metal from some torn out pieces falling down. The doc removed that thing, the clipping form vanished, and then got up. "Thanks, that was pretty close."

"what was that?"

He looked at the weapon. "Oh this? This is the finished CATS. It's a lot safer to use when you allow it to take effect from a distance and with a delay."

That wasn't what he meant though. "that thing you shot."

"Oh, all right. A submarine tentacle Monster that spends their lives in a tank. Their constant goal is to wipe out all other races they come across. They're kind of to Monsters what Elves are to humans, only a lot more honest about their intentions. Speaking of Elves..."

"and what was it doing here?"

"You know, hanging about. I was was trying to find out one of their hideouts, but I presume I'm going to have to find a new one, now."

Sans was growing concerned. He folded up his arms and tapped his foot. "so how much time've you been spending using this thing anyway?"

It seemed generally from how he was behaving lately, that he preferred to dodge this topic. He nodded, trying to make it sound like less than it probably was. "Quite some time."

"don't ya think it'd be safer to stay here for whatever the Temmies are on about?"

The doc's face was twitching. He was thinking about what to say, but from it's relaxation in the end, it appeared he gave in. "I know, I just can't stop." He was striking out and pacing in a circle through the console room. "Seeing the world through the eyes of a time traveler, it's completely different. It just never ends, there is too much. Places to see, people to go, whenever you think you're starting to map out the universe, it turns out it has a whole bigger scope to it. I wish I could make you...yes. I can make you understand." He stopped, and headed straight back to Sans before looking down to him. "Little Sans, are you happy down here? With our situation I mean."

That was pretty sudden. He didn't know how to respond to that. He scratched the itching back of his skull. "I guess so...why?"

"Don't you think it could be better? That we could be on the surface? Maybe have a better life with more lasting friends? Maybe even have more things to enjoy?"

"we already got a lot to enjoy here."

The doc turned around again and started slowly marching around the console, turning all the screens in Sans' direction. "But, it could be better. It will be better. I have seen the future. I have recorded the future! Look!" What appeared after he opened some video file, was footage of an enormous square. You couldn't see the pavement anywhere, because the entire place was stuffed to the brink with people, the men of which were wearing uniforms he had only ever seen on fictional villains and the women pretty dresses. Even the windows of the surrounding buildings were all open and every inch was packed with the faces of more people watching the spectacle in the centre. "This is it. This is what all that we do from here on in is working towards. As a saying from that time says, it is darkest before the Dan. It is also in the darkest of times when humans become the most determined. The time you're originally from was a pretty grim one for humans to be in as it was, and would turn all the more grim over the decades. There were many, many Sansibars before you, and there were much, much more Sansibars after you. And there will continue to be. Including the 'now' of the surface. In it's own time, it's known as 'the modern age' which comes from the fallacious belief that novelty constitutes superiority, but is afterwards only known as 'the age of Elves' or 'the Age of inversion', because there are figures and institutions of self-proclaimed authority throughout it that frame everything as the opposite of what it is.

The destruction of peaceful nations to create nightmarish regimes where life is short, poverty runs wild and everyone quickly dies off or is executed for non-reasons, is celebrated by the press and marketed to the populations of other nations as 'rebellions' and 'freedom fighters overthrowing oppressive governments'. The entire system that the global economic and political landscape runs on, necessitates a state of perpetual war, war for the sake of war. And bringing in endless amounts of people to throw into the money-making meat-grinder every month of every year. And those same wars, whenever they are in danger of coming to an end, are re-sparked and kept alive by international organizations sending 'peace troops' into potentially peaceful warzones. The systematic impoverishment and subsequent extinction of humanity, marketed to that same humanity as the pursuit of 'ethnic variety', among other things by creating unequal conditions in their disfavour in the name of 'equality'. All for the sake of 'the greater good', and in truth of course just more Elven tools for their relentless war against the very host they live off."

Everyone was looking at the middle of the square, including a group not far from the camera, where Sans even saw himself wearing a blue hoodie, as well as Papyrus in a weird suit of armor, the doc, a much bigger and older version of the royal family, a male and a female lizard, the late-teens-to-young-adult version of the as of yet eight-year-old prince and a brown-haired human girl about the prince's age. What was in the centre was a small set of gallows. From the end of a wooden bar hung a rope with a noose on it's end. The spectators around, humans, Monsters, Orcs, Naga and Houzes alike, watched with awe as two Orcs escorted a little boy up on the stage. "Contrary to what the malicious elements of the surface prefer, the age of Inversion doesn't last forever. Monsters have come to the surface, and sooner or later, inevitable conflict leads to the collapse of the political landscape as the humans know it and first the humans and Monsters wring their independence off the clutches of their newly recognized enemies. Soon after that, non-Elves of all walks of life unite to tear down the reign of the banks and show no mercy when pursuing their previous abusers. After the age of Inversion follows the age of Obliteration, where the host finally removes it's parasite. Look at the boy's ears!" They were pointy. "Mordecai Bennett. An Elf, the last of his kind and the day the Age of Obliteration ends - the day this footage is from, is the day of his execution. "

Whenever the trembling and crying boy wanted to stop and hesitated to move closer to the chair below the noose, the Orc pushed him onwards, with force if necessary. "After that, the constant struggles of life end. Society is cleansed of all non-productive elements, the people get to live happy and fulfilling lives with stable families. No lost parents to death or divorce. No more Sansibars. Working hard finally actually means living a wealthy life. With no Elven infiltrators to jump start or re-ignite wars, most wars by far simply die off within half a generation. What follows is the Age of Mankind or also known as the Age of Prosperity. Humans and Monsters finally can enjoy an era of peace and widespread moderate luxury, and once the Southern Wilds are recolonized and under human rule, out of lack of alternative and only to a limited extent, so can soon the Orcs."

"humans? but what about monsters?"

The doc smiled, and the look on his face was the look of someone who heard a very silly question. "What makes you think that one's happiness must exclude that of the other?What makes you even think one can exist without the other? The name of the first emperor of the fourth Atelian Empire is Asgore Dreemurr. Yes! The Asgore Dreemurr! The royal family of Monsters becomes the imperial family of humans and Monsters. Humans and Monsters once ruled the world, and once merit and honesty are the prime directives of the world, we will rule it once again."

He couldn't bear to see what was happening. It felt...bad. "but he's just a little kid."

The doc met him with the coldest look he had seen in a long time. "So what? You are susceptible to falling for it. The core of all Elven methods of exploitation is to prey on your empathy. You think this one should be granted mercy?" He laughed, but with a sad face. "He's an Elf like all the others. Sure, he is crying and begging for mercy - **now** that the tables are turned on him, but Sans - you of all people should know better. More so than anyone else. If I'm not wrong, you were a little boy once, too. In fact..." He was getting increasingly angry at the people he was talking about. The people of the Weidenstrauss ghetto. "If I recall correctly, your family died in a suspiciously contained house fire, that happened to only affect the one house not inhabited by Elves, followed by a newly orphaned child being turned away and even forbidden from so much as standing or sitting somewhere out in the cold rain. Damned to die for the 'crime' of existing while human." With a stiff face, he loomed over Sans. "Tell me, little Sans. When the situation was reversed, you were the helpless little boy and it was your life that depended on the mercy of Elves. Where exactly did that get you?"

He gave him a rhetorical pause to answer, but then went on. The light of his pupils faded. "Dead, that's where it got you. To their preference, a long, sad and painful death. You will neither comprehend nor believe the cruelty of Elves - all Elves, even this one - until you read what they teach about you. All empathy is misplaced on them. I had a suspicion of that even in my human life, and whenever I visited any place between that day and any point in the past, I was only. Ever. Reassured. There just are some people who forever live on a strict kill-or-be-killed basis, and Elves fall under that from the start to the bitter end. And before you go all 'why can't we try being nice, maybe it works this one time' - it's..." He slid to the side to check on the screen. Gee, he spent so much time in other times, he lost track of the present. "Nineteen-ninety eight now. Humans have been trying being nice for almost three hundred years now, and it hasn't worked once. Part of what made things as bad as they are now is humans constantly thinking just that. 'It didn't work the last time, but maybe being nice solves it this one next time', 'this one next time', time after time after time after time. But guess what, it's just not going to happen. It can work with Monsters and humans. But that's mostly it." When the boy was standing on the chair, still crying and shivering with his head in the noose, the Orc kicked the chair aside, and the rope tightened around his neck. After a while of twitching and struggling, dangling off the robe, he eventually came to a stop. What followed was the same doc that was just talking to him, walking up on the stage with a stethoscope. He checked for the boy's heartbeat and then turned around. When he announced his death, the crowd erupted with cheers and applause. Hats were drawn and thrown in the air, and confetti was sprayed across from the windows above. Everyone was awestruck over the significance of this event and applauding the dawn of a new era, everyone, even future Sans.

"I can tell from your look. You're not quite understanding. This is good. This is the good future. It 'feels' bad, but you need to detach yourself from your emotions and look at the facts. If you already find this one bad, then every single other one - every future under Elven rule - is much, much worse. With much, much more bloodshed than this one. This is the future that currently exists and the future we need to recreate should that change. The date of this particular event changes, but the date of it's occurrence is linked to the day the Monsters leave the Underground." Sans wasn't so sure about any of this any more, but he continued to hear out the doc anyway. "Now comes our role in all this. There is a prophesy in the religious doctrine of the Elves. The sons of Heket, who come in all colours, will be the end of all Elves. Humans have white skin, yellow skin, brown hair, black hair, red hair, blonde hair, blue eyes, green eyes, brown eyes, blue-green spotted eyes, variations of the above - they're the one race of surface-dwellers that comes in multiple colours, so in their interpretation, the extinction of humanity constitutes the prevention of that prophesy coming true. The probable truth though, is that either the prophesy isn't actually acquired through time travel, but a self-fulfilling one, or that not humans bring the beginning of their end."

"it's us?"

"Both. Humans and Monsters are mutually symbiotic. The residue of diffused human souls fills Monsters with life and the whimsical nature of Monsters instills humans with a sense of curiosity, wonder and a general will to live. Humans as they are now are demoralized. They aren't curious, because they don't feel that there is anything worth aspiring to. That is in part why they are not rising up. Why they are happy to put the mediocre on a pedestal and watch as the act of exceeding is demonized. They are complacent and just see their fate as inevitable. Some even consider this complacency a part of growing up and falsely look down upon people who don't have it yet. Now guess what sooner or later happens, if us Monsters were to come back?"

"they'd be fighting back."

"Precisely." He brought along the printed-out measurements of their navigation system. "The time machine can't see beyond a certain amount of alterations, but even so, I can already see a pattern." He pointed at a point on the map, where the line branched out and the ends of it grew in both directions to ridiculous degrees.

"An anomaly. A giant cluster of alternate timelines starting not long after the year two thousand. Here is what I know about it. This girl." He pointed at a photo of the young brunette woman that was with the skeletons and the Dreemurrs, which he gave to Sans. "Chara Ironside, later known as Chara Dreemurr. In the year two thousand, she falls into the Underground in the Ruins and survives thanks to us filling up the room with earth and raising it's floor to allow future humans to survive a fall down there. She then meets the Dreemurrs, they adopt her, she convinces them over time that it's time to leave the Underground, and then comes to us for help. We will need to be patient, she will come to us for help, I know, because I told her without telling her what it's about. With the Monsters willing and ready to leave the Underground in peace - it has to be in peace though - we use this time machine to bypass the barrier by breaking through the very fabric of reality. We time travel into the present - so to speak - and bring all Monsters that want to, with us."

"so that's what we need the time machine for."

"Yes. The way things stand though, I can only guess one thing. The timing is too close for this not to be the case. Two thousand - Chara arrives - two thousand and one - anomaly starts. Chara is the peak of the convergence. The ultimately determined human. The human that can RESET time. The event you just saw transpire on the screen has two main conditions that it necessitates in order to happen. One: Monsters return to the surface in peace. Two: The ultimately determined human is with them. As long as these two conditions are met, the path to a much, much brighter future opens up."

"that's nice and all, but you're startin' to scare me with all this talk of mass murder, i think you've pent enough time with this machine."

Wingdings turned around in shock. "Enough? I'm not nearly done. I had to tell you all this sooner or later any way, in case anything happens to me."

"if ya stay here, nothing's gonna happen to you."

"I can't. Even if I wanted to, there's still the rift."

"rift?"

"It must be somehow linked to the anomaly. There is a rift in time and space. No, not just time and space. A tear that seems to cut through all overlapping dimensions simultaneously. And it's everywhere. Wherever I go, past, present, future, I can go to the most far-away corners of the universe and the rift is still there. It only shows here, look!" He opened up a window to measure whether an area was safe to traverse. Space as a human being knew it wasn't just a set of coordinates, but something that was there. The concept of space only applied where all known dimensions overlapped. This window measured for any given place whether they did, and therefore whether it was safe to go there. But this time, in their very location, it was mostly safe, except for a tiny, deformed speck of red in an ocean of green. "You see? And not just that, it's growing. I have to find it's origin before it gets too big. Who knows what could happen if it does!" He was panicking more and more. After running in a circle several times, not knowing what to do, he eventually pushed Sans out of the time machine. "What am I even doing, wasting time here? I need to go. I can't let this rift ruin everything. What if it has world-ending implications?" Sans had a very bad feeling. He already had a bad feeling when the doc was talking positively about killing Elf kids, but the doc was really losing his cool. He wouldn't listen, even though Sans said something.

He wasn't thinking straight, but before Sans knew how serious this was getting, the door closed, the droning noise announced his departure, he would have come back a few seconds later, the doc would calm down and it would all be all right, right? But it didn't come. At least for the initial few seconds it didn't. Until a shockwave sent Sans back to the opposite wall, a loud banging noise that was actually the time machine's materialization preceded the instant return of the machine. He winced and got back up, but what he saw was the same machine, burned to coal in it's corners, smoke was coming up from everywhere around it, the entrance door was torn open. And a dark shadow gripped his spine, as he saw that it was empty. "* doc?" Shivers began running down his spine, his legs were feeling uneasy. What was going on? Where did the doc go? "* doc!" He ran inside to see if he somehow got things mixed up or it was some sort of illusion. It wasn't even big any more, the same little thing he and the doc had made when they first finished it. No console room, no corridors, nothing. Maybe it was a prank and it had some pre-programmed route. Anything. "* doc! please!" He searched everything, his cheeks were already tensing and he was near tears. What happened?

Controls, shielding devices, space extension for safety reasons, everything was fried, the entire machine was junk. "* doc! please, come back!" He screamed into the time machine, holding onto both sides of the door. But he knew that that was pointless and sunk onto his knees. No matter how long he stared at the thing, that wouldn't help. Something must have happened to him and the emergency protocol brought the machine back without him. He was trembling all over. Sure, this guy was crazy, but he was always there for him. In his darkest days he was there to cheer him up. Through everything he saw down here, the doc was guiding him, everything human that came down here, the two of them enjoyed together. He couldn't imagine life without the Doctor. "* doc...", he sobbed. "* don't do this to me." Without knowing what he did, he just got up and started banging at the thing. Banging first at it's walls normally, then with a strength that tore holes in it's walls and it's console. He screamed off the top of his lungs and went on. Screamed and screamed begging for a miracle, something to bring him back. He couldn't do this. He couldn't lose him after all this. "* eternal life, doc! you promised! we could be together like family and have more friends! please come back!"

"SANS?" Sans had long given up and was first running his fingers across the cold, charred metal, then tried starting to repair this whole thing piece by piece. Maybe he could look for the doc himself. Then Papyrus showed up. "BROTHER, WHAT'S WRONG?"

How was he gonna tell that to Papyrus? He turned to the slowly nearing skeleton, his own jaws trembling and his eyesockets filled with tears. "* the doc's gone."

Papyrus, for whatever reason, was neither shocked, nor struck. He was just plain confused. "DOCTOR? BUT YOU'RE RIGHT HERE."

This wasn't a time for jokes. "* i mean the doc. the doc-doc!"

Papyrus really seemed insistent on this humour thing right now of all times. "YES, YOU'RE RIGHT HERE."

He got up and screeched at Papyrus, and grabbed him by the shoulders to shake him. "* i've got no nerve for this shit right now, i mean the doctor. the royal scientist. dr gaster? w. d. gaster? wayne duncan gaster? don't play dumb!"

His younger brother had an uncertain smile. The expression of a skeleton who genuinely didn't know what he was talking about. "WHAT'S REALLY WRONG? THERE'S GOT TO BE SOMETHING I CAN DO TO HELP!"

He just got up, grabbed Papyrus and dragged him by the wrist. "* it's gotta be the amnesia again. something went wrong with the doc's soul burst thing, you forgot everything and now it's happening again. i'm gonna show you what i mean, the others've gotta remember him!" He paced through the lab as fast as he could without running.

"SANS, I'M PERFECTLY FINE. IF I WASN'T, I WOULDN'T REMEMBER YOU, RIGHT?"

"* who knows, maybe you're gonna forget me too!" He hasted through the complex of every level of this place, but none of the assistants were here. Their rooms weren't occupied either. It was like they were empty guest rooms the whole time. Face guy, kid, cross guy, no-one. "* this is it, papyrus. next up, this place." He knew the code off by hand by this point. He went to the one place the doc had always said he shouldn't tell anyone about. The gallery of paintings of the doc's old friends. And the late queen he had secretly had a crush on when he was a human. But the gallery was empty. He headed to their rooms, but all their pictures from vacations, even the ones where Papyrus wasn't there yet - well they were still there, but the doc was gone. From each one. It was like in that film he used to like so much, where the guy Sans based his clothing off, saw his family disappear because his Mom was dancing with another guy than his Dad, only this version of it was becoming very, very real. Photos over photos, that he clearly remembered being with the doc on them, and yet he was gone on all of them. Even ones where originally only he was visible, had turned into empty landscape photos. "* what is going on? what happened to the doc?" And off he went, out of the lab, to the lifts. In the bazaar, that had become a lot more empty over the years, he finally met big ol' face guy.

"* Good evening, Doctor."

Sans was steaming with rage. He got up on all toes and pointed the finger way up, mere inches away from that giant face. The light in his eyes hat long vanished. "* For the last time, friendo, you know I'm not the Doc. Tell him. Tell him about W. D. Gaster."

The face tried to smile back. "* Who?"

"* W. D. Gaster! The royal scientist!"

"* You're the royal scientist."

What? "* what're you...since when?" He had to ask for details, maybe corner this guy by making him commit to details and then catch him when they contradict each other. "* since what year exactly was i the royal scientist?"

The face raised itself and rolled it's eyes to think. "* I don't know - Nineteen fifteen? Somewhere around that?"

"* 'my' lab is full of inventions, what's the first one i made?"

"* Why would I know? Nobody knows what's in your lab."

"* when did you start as a lab assistant?"

"* I never was a lab assistant!"

Sans had had way enough time in his life to acquire a first class intuition, but according to it, this guy was being sincere. No telltales of any lies whatsoever. "MAYBE YOU'RE WORKING YOURSELF A LITTLE TOO HARD, LATELY. WE SHOULD TAKE A BREAK FOR A FEW DAYS."

His light faded again, and he gave Papyrus a very angry look, grunting through his teeth. "* i'm saying this one more time, the doc is real, you guys are all just a bit slow today. nevermind! there's one guy i know he really cared about! he remembers the doc for sure!"

In front of his house, Asgore was sitting in the corner and watch the prince play in their little garden. Upon seeing Sans, he got up and welcomed the two with open arms. "* Ah, Dr. Sans. What do you have to show to me today."

He just stopped in place. "* oh no, not you too!"

The king was startled. "* What? Is there something on my face?" He ran his hand through his beard and didn't notice how Sans was leaving until he was already half-way across the bridge.

It couldn't be. Nobody remembered him. Absolutely no-one. Guards, former lab assistants, old man Gerson, nobody. And everything that was directly and only possibly related to him, all the little things like personal belongings of personal or emotional importance were gone. The doc's room wasn't the doc's room. It wasn't just that the doc left and didn't come back. Otherwise, Sans could just rebuild the time machine from scratch and maybe after a few decades of work, head off with Papyrus to look for him himself. He even checked. The blueprints were all in Wingdings and they were all still there. Instead, it was like he never existed. Like he was completely erased from time itself. For the time being, he dropped it and left Papyrus to go do whatever he wanted to. He found himself sitting around locked in his own room, sifting through all their photos. What could have happened? What can erase a person like that? He was still here, right? He could remember. What if this was fluid? What if he was gonna forget, too? He took a piece of paper and placed it next to one photo. A group photo of the three of them.

The doc, Papyrus and himself. They were smiling at the camera with the serpentine rapids in the background. Maybe if he...In the photo he saw, it was only the two of them. Him and Papyrus. He clearly remembered the doc standing above and looking through right between them with his hands stretched out. He took the piece of paper, placed it over the photo and tracing the lines. He drew a copy of it, only that he added the doc above. He could remember, right? So if he drew from memory, he would have a picture of him. But this was where it got even weirder. While he was adding details and making corrections to make the drawing a bit more lifelike, the whole drawing - well the doc that he was adding to it - vanished before his eyes. He tried it again and again. The doc hadn't just somehow been erased from time. He was actively being erased, wherever there was a trace of him. Outside his memory. He was near tears again, but not quite there. After countless attempts and at some point, one copy being so badly drawn that the doc wasn't erased, he took a marker and wrote onto the picture in red letters: 'don't forget'. He couldn't let himself forget. The doc was real, he knew it. If he wasn't, who brought Sans back to life? Oh sure, the assistants would probably come up with something like someone else brought him back, or that he always was a skeleton and the whole part with being a human kid was a dream.

He just lay back in his bed and closed his eyes. He had to think. What would the doc say in this situation? What would he say if he was there and could talk to him? "* Never existed, you say?", he would say. "* Nonsense. If you remember me, there's got to be something to me. People don't just 'never existed'. That doesn't happen. Something specific must have happened." He imagined himself being there, in the lab, and the two of them figuring it out.

"* so how do you explain all this?"

"* Well, if drawing me accurately doesn't work, then active change is made on the fly, even now. It isn't a simple change from state A to state B. Something is continuously causing it. Pulling every piece of me - every object or neural configuration that can be ascribed to me and only me me - away from where it is, into nothing. Like a vacuum. Something Gaster-related pops up - gets drawn away and sucked in. Like water down a drain."

"* or down a hole."

"* Or down a hole."

"* or a rift."

"* Ah, I see where you're going. So I said the rift was getting bigger, right?"

"* yeah?"

"* And it follows me wherever I go."

"* yup."

"* I see." The imaginary doc scratched his chin. "* Let's assume that instead of what real-me thought..." He drew his thoughts on a black board that appeared in front of the two of them. "* ...the rift is actually independent from the anomaly, and the link between them is instead what they have in common. This place. Us." He paused. "* Me."

"* pretty much."

"* Hm...wait, the rift showed up on the feed for dimensional overlap, right?"

"* correctamundo."

"* So every semblance of me is disappearing as if drawn into a vacuum by means of pressure, the rift is an actual tear within the dimensions. An opening within them. Dimensions exist as something that is there as well. Gravity draws space and time, and similarly, dimensions themselves are also subjected to something akin to pressure. If I left, I could have been gone for any given amount of time. Any given amount of time means any given amount of travels. In all my travels, I went to future, past, present, but the rift keeps getting bigger regardless of what direction I travel in. So the real constant is..."

"* you."

"* There is something that doesn't make sense about what you're thinking, little Sans. If the rift is acts like a vacuum to mass, how would I be drawn into it? I wouldn't, I'm made of magic and mass. It would be drawing in time in space. So my body in terms of matter and magic can't just simply fall into it. The only thing that could..." A cold shadow ran across Sans' spine. He knew what was coming. "* The only thing that could happen is that instead of me getting drawn in, the space surrounding me would get drawn in. I would be in a box but with no space, I would be..."

He would be crushed and die. "* dust. but there's no dust."

The imaginary doc folded up his arms. "* I'm sorry, little Sans, I really am. But as far as I can tell, and by extension as far as you can tell, I probably died. For good this time."

"* then why is there no dust?"

"* The time machine was broken, maybe my remains fell out before the machine came back!"

He was about to open his eyes and get up. "* no, i'm not just gonna take that. maybe i can find you."

"* Then what? If changes are applied on-the-fly, that also means that if this rift is what killed me or made me disappear, then it's still there and in the event that you find it, will kill you too." He was gonna do it. End this daydream. But even this not-real-doc was getting to him. "* Think it through, this is suicide. And completely stupid and unnecessary suicide at that. Do you really think I would want you to die on a pointless trek ending in practically certain death? I've spent all this time - decades - trying to raise your spirits and get you prepared to work on something proper. After all this, do you really think I wouldn't care?"

It was kinda funny. An imaginary figure in his head was bringing him to tears. Real tears. "* no, you're right."

"* Think very carefully, what would I want you to do? If you really want to help me, why not stick to what was important to me?"

He was talking about that last encounter they had. "* you were kinda going crazy back there."

The doc turned around and sighed. "* Yes, you're probably right. 'Running out of time'? With a time machine? What nonsense. Nevertheless, if you don't want to stick with that, all the time you spent with me, I also spent with you. I would probably just want you to have a happy life. Besides, you now even have family without me, right?"

His mouth was trembling again. "* I can't do this, doc, all this..."

"* The science thing? Then don't. Do whatever makes you happy. Look for some other job, move somewhere else. I don't know, ask Asgore. If this timeline has you be the royal scientist, he's bound to know you. He recognized you when you were there with Papyrus."

"* it's not just that. i'll miss you, doc. way too much."

"* Well, what can I say? I'm not even real. Real-me is probably dead. I'm basically just you, talking to yourself in your mind - wait. Something just occurred to you. There was something I said, wasn't there. The people you really care about, stay with you forever, even if you lose them. If there is something you want to do for me, why not that? All you need to do, is remember that I was there. And if you don't know what to do, just ask yourself, what would I do? In fact, instead of just imagining me being as self-confident as I am, you could do with a bit more of that yourself."

Sans' eyes shot open. The doc was right. And he was wrong at the same time. It was pointless to look to a dead man for advice, but he had to be the strong one here now. The Monsters needed a royal scientist. And him, he was just not cut out for this. And Papyrus...well he was Papyrus. He still had the picture of the young woman. Well, now it was a picture of nothing. It literally was just an empty square. The future was destroyed. It wasn't like he was that pumped about it anyway. There really was no point in hanging on to this stuff. Even if he got around and put all of his back into it, it was only two years until she came, if he tried putting all of it together once again all of his own, she'd be way old by the time he was done. And that was assuming she would really wait for that long, without knowing that it would work. Besides, if he did decide to repair it and solve it all that way and it could work out after all, he would travel back in time and tell himself right now in this very room in three, two, one... Sans looked to the other side of the room and froze. Nothing. No he didn't. Or will not have.

In the following days, he tried to wrap up all the doc's stuff as far as he could. He made contact with two of the assistants, including face guy, but it was like none of them ever were assistants, they lived completely different lives. It was only him and Papyrus. It was at least good to know he didn't have to fire anyone. He used the doc's savings, of which everyone was convinced that it was his, to have himself a big, comfy house in Snowdin speed-built. Papyrus was surprised, but didn't object to it at all. In fact, it appeared he enjoyed being outside as much as this. Most of the stuff from the lab he left behind. He only brought along the most precarious and precious things, memorabilia from his time with the doc, at least what of it didn't just disappear, what was left of the time machine, it's blueprints as well as those of some other finished pet projects of the doc's, anything he could think of that was really important. He locked away the rest of the lab. And broke what he needed to break so it was impossible to access the crucial parts of it. Who knew what 'his' successor would do with stuff like this CATS thing, or yet worse, they might release Yandereblender or Tsundereplane.

He ditched the clothes. There was nothing cool about time travel any more, and he couldn't bear to see that stuff any more either. One of those first few days, he headed to the inner city and just bought everything that felt comfortable, no matter what it looked like together. He couldn't bother to care any a week, he was done and handed the keys over to Asgore. "* Are you sure about this, Dr. Sans..."

Sans interrupted him. "* please, it's just sans."

"* Sans. You have worked and helped the people continuously for decades. Are you sure you just give this up for nothing? Can I not offer you anything? A grand reward? A title, some sort of office? Anything?" He did have an idea. If anything really bad happened, he had powers to help stop it, but depending on the situation, he ran the risk of not being in clean legal waters if he freely used them. So he asked Asgore to break him some sorta unpaid judge-jury-and-executioner-deal and got his wish. It took telling him about the things he could do though.

And as expected, the future the doc showed him was broken. The human kid came as predicted, but by the time Sans thought it was really getting late and being patient wasn't gonna cut it, it was already too late, a tragedy had occurred and the king had declared war on humanity. There was no turning back from there on in. Living their life here this way was gonna be it. It wasn't all bad, it was always fun to see Papyrus do what he did. Being outside the way they now were opened up whole new parts of what he was. He started one project after the other, dedicated himself fully to each one, tried to get the attention and the approval of the villagers and of course succeeded at weirding them all out. Not that they weren't weirded out already by two like them showing up outta nowhere, but it was a small village. Bigger than the two or three little huts it was when he first came through here, but still pretty small, with a tight-knit community of villagers where word spread around quickly. He was probably weirding them out himself too, but his more subtle approach at getting their attention by pranking them in not always obvious ways and keeping jokes ready that they liked, helped a lot.

First, a human came through. He knew what would happen and Papyrus was too soft a guy to kill them or watch them get killed, so he befriended them and 'shortcutted' them somewhere way ahead. Later he would find out some fish kid took it upon herself to kill them. Then came the resets. Time kept resetting itself back. It wasn't like how the doc described seeing new timelines after them being changed through timelines. He didn't see the finished product, he was brought back, every time time reset itself. Every time all he did was undone. Any efforts he made to help, made nil, was he nice to someone? Was he not so nice to someone? Did he say this? Did he say that? It didn't matter, because it all went back to the same point anyway.

During that time, sooner or later Papyrus would start talking about a flower talking to him. Sans wouldnta thought much of it, but it seemed to know things that happened in other timelines, but didn't happen yet, so whoever was pranking Papyrus could at least remember resets. He tried investigating after who or what the person behind 'the flower' was, but whoever it was, was avoiding him and he could have sworn at some points, that there resets made just to shut him down from finding a clue. But Chara was dead right? Wasn't she supposed to be the ultimately determined human? Why did resets happen even though the person that supposedly made them happen was dead and gone?

The third kid he zapped to Hotland, and later found out they had murdered two vulkins before the fish got them. He first reconsidered doing the same as always, but hey, who can resist helping a few helpless children. Except for that one guy way later. He shoulda taken the hint that he wasn't nice. He only showed up on the very last timeline. The one that stuck. And when he did, he killed one of the dogs, so Sans just disposed of him himself before Papyrus had an opportunity to meet him. Then it stopped. A pause, no more resets. That was the point where he decided to put one constant into what he did. He brought Papyrus back to the lab. Back to the parts of the lab that were inaccessible to anyone. To the machine - that machine. The adaptation workbench. "AND WHAT EXACTLY WILL THAT DO?"

"* it'll help you learn some cool attacks. you can impress a lotta people with it, i'm sure." He didn't want to do this to him, but he preferred that to risking seeing him die. After he had fastened all the straps and chains, he headed to the console. Giving him a fully functional gravitational alignment probably wasn't such a good idea. You could dial it down though. "* there's a special technique. a blue attack that'll allow you to make someone blue, then they get drawn in one direction all the time."

"WOWIE, SOUNDS INTERESTING."

"* then i've got something real big for ya. a special attack. anything in your way can be blasted away with it, so ya gotta be very careful when to use it."

"I AM READY FOR ANYTHING SANS!"

He faced him one more time. "* you really sure you're ready?"

"ABSOLUTELY! DO YOUR WORST! MUSCLES NEED TRAINING AND POWER NEEDS PAIN!"

"* whatever makes you endure this." He tried pulling the lever twice until he remembered the whole laughing thing you needed to do for it to work. Sans had a lot of respect for how tough his brother was. He took this really well, and the torture was over without a complaint.

"IS IT OVER?" When Sans reassured him that it was, Papyrus was very audibly relieved though. He didn't even know why he was worrying. It was Papyrus, even with a blaster, if he dared to summon one, he probably never had it in him to genuinely hurt someone. It was only for self-defense.

Then, the resets started again. Then came the one he would get to know as Frisk. Then Frisk got crazy and killed everyone. But if it weren't for the doc's broken time machine, he wouldn'ta had a navigation system to fix, he wouldn'ta seen that the universe was gonna end unless he did something and he probably wouldn'ta bothered to stop them. And you can take a guess in which way the blasters came in handy here. It didn't really matter what the original plan of the Temmies was. If they hadn't had him and the doc make a time machine and G-Blasters, he would neither have had what it takes to beat mad-murder-spree-possibly-possessed-zombie-Frisk, nor would he have bothered to try. Whoever or whatever was driving Frisk, would have succeeded, the world would have been ERASEd and the universe would have ended. Luckily, that didn't happen. The doc had saved the universe, but at the cost of his own existence.

.

.

.

But it wasn't like that was gonna stop her from trying again, was it now?


	28. It's over nineteen!

.

A Doctor's Duty

Chapter 17

It's over nineteen!

* * *

"Now then, the impact of a physical attack on the structural integrity is determined by different factors than for surface-dwellers. Because the bodies of most surface-dwelling creatures are - for the most part - solid, self-sustaining objects of mass, how effective a kinetic, thermal or other kind of attack is determined entirely by outside, measurable, physical factors such as physical impact, temperature, shape of impacting object, substance, acidity, current quantum state, and a whole measure of other factors. Which in many cases are very very similar due to a very limited amount of situations being possible in crude combat with a melee weapon. Which becomes more relevant once Monsters get involved, because ranged projectiles can't carry over the most important component to killing a Monster - intent!

While physical impact does play a major role in how strongly a Monster is damaged or hurt by an attack, what matters much more is the intent behind it. To be more exact, the intent-differential. It's not so much just 'does the person want to hurt or kill you, does it want either' - and so on. It's instead 'How much do they want to kill you and how much do you want to kill them'? A monster that doesn't want to defend themselves against an innocent-looking human child is going to be an enormous lot weaker than a Monster that faces a grown human being that can perfectly easily defend themselves.

But even the intent of an attack is not composed only of the momentary intent. It is affected both by 'what does the person want to do', and if they want to hurt or kill you 'how strongly are they even capable of wanting it'? That is the part where LOVE comes in. LOVE - short for Level of Violence is the emotional distance a person gains when they experience killing another person. Whether that person is a human, a Monster, an Orc, it doesn't matter. You kill someone or yet worse - murder someone, you gain exp and usually, your LOVE increases as well. The more LOVE you have, the more you are used to the thought and the first-hand experience of ending another person's life and the more of it you have, the more you harden yourself to each new kill. If you are a Monster and are faced with someone who has a lot of LOVE, the only way not to make this mean that you can neither affect them too strongly with your magic, nor withstand too many of their attacks, is to have a sufficient or even equal or above amount of LOVE yourself. Which makes facing off against violent savages extremely difficult for us without becoming violent savages ourselves. Luckily, there are ways of measuring a person's LOVE from a safe distance. Which also means that those who have LOVE will become very paranoid, should they find out that we can measure their LOVE and EXP, because LOVE doesn't just poof away overtime. It stays with you for life. Every point of exp you gain, you gain for life. That means if any of them is guilty, even if they get away perfectly, we're the one group that can see what they did. There is no going back. You can't outlive your sins past - well, technically speaking, depending on the situation they're not inherently sins either, but the thing you can do, is avoid committing new ones."

* * *

Things were looking up in the recent days, but being reminded of all these things Frisk brought back to him was really all it took to flush a good day down the drain. He had long ditched his old name. The guy by that name died a century ago. He was Sans, and Papyrus was what was left of his family. He didn't have any nerve left for his brother either, he just needed a night of thoughts and sleep to get himself back together. Hard to believe how much this shook him up. Even on the next morning, he wasn't really over the thought of getting pressed on all that happened. He really felt like just spilling the beans. But he knew that was stupid. Better distract himself somehow instead. "SANS!" Papyrus came out of the kitchen and looked up the railing. "SO EARLY? I'M IMPRESSED. YOU'RE GETTING MORE DILIGENT BY THE DAY! AND THERE I WAS WORRIED. SILLY OF ME."

"* yeah, pretty silly, huh?" It was probably better if he distracted himself. "* so what about heading back to town?"

His amazed brother's eyesockets widened. "WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT DID YOU DO TO SANS?" Sans gave him a wink, but even when they set off, he could feel that Papyrus was on to him. He could somehow sense that something was wrong. Well no point in thinking about it, that didn't make it better. One giveaway was that despite knowing that Sans had met with the kid, he didn't press him on what Frisk had said. To his surprise though, the city was pretty full. The massive square that connected all the major shopping lanes, including the one with the book store they were heading to, a moderately large crowd was gathering to attend some event. In front of a closed curtain stood a podium with a green-red logo and some name that they didn't bother to read. They agreed to just head straight to the book store to get what Papyrus was here for. This whole ordering a book ahead of time went surprisingly free of further issues. With all that other stuff happening, Sans was expecting there to be two or three more catches before you could actually get what you asked for, but he figured as long as you're spending money and not trying to make any, things were a lot more easy. "FINALLY, NOW NOTHING WILL STOP ME FROM GETTING TO WORK...OH LOOK, UNDYNE'S HERE TOO!" Sans was surprised at that and looked around, but didn't spot her. "NO, I MEAN DOWNTOWN." He showed Sans a few Undernet status updates from Alphys, one of which was a selfie of her and Undyne in the outside part of the enormous old building in front of the square. And so they headed off to look for where that picture was just taken half a minute ago, to find something that would stop him from getting to work.

They found the two sitting on the upper end of the staircase overlooking the event, eating icecream. Not nicecream, human icecream. "UNDYNE! WHAT LEADS YOU HERE?" The skeletons sat down to both sides of them, Sans next to Alphys, Papyrus next to Undyne.

The tiderider pointed at Alphys with a comparably indifferent look. "* Ask her, she's dragging me to two places today."

As if she had been waiting for someone to re-tell it to, Alphys raised a finger and started explaining. "* So the mayor of this city hasn't been elected yet, but she preponed her accession speech because she's pretty sure she's getting a third term. She wants to save the date of her actual accession to hold some sort of event to greet us Monsters. And that's her stage for the former." She pointed at the podium. The logo seemed to be that of some party, and the name and title read: 'JACLYN - Progressing Forward' With the surname 'wimble' printed below in smaller letters. Teams of reporters were getting set up, with cameras installed to look from the exact points where the crowd started. It wasn't that big, but someone sure wanted to make it look big. For some reason, those journalists were leaving the four of them alone, but at some point in-between a small group of young human men with red 'Bring back Glory' summer hats came by, surprised to see them here, came up to them to ask for Alphys, or 'lizard-sensei' as they called her, to pose for photos with them. Just like how they knew her, she first tried to refuse out of plain shyness, but soon was eternalized on the drives of several digital cameras. They didn't spend any time talking though, and Alpyhs was weirdly repellent when it came to where they knew her from and what this was about.

With how many people were here and how many more were passing the crowd, Sans saw a good opportunity in this event to stake out and see if he would spot any people to keep a good eye on. After heading around the corner, he teleported onto a distant skyscraper and from there on the way back to Farfoot village, to the Underground and all the way back downtown to bring along one of his scouting machines. Even when he was back, he sat a bit further away on the same stairs to scan the locals that were passing by. "* Superhero stuff?" He was shaken up by Alphys, who had come over to sit next to him.

"* ya've gotta stop calling it that." As usual, almost all the humans his analytical device was targeting had no EXP at all and even the select few that did only had probably one kill worth of them. Some of the Orcs here and there had some more, but given his past experience with Orcs, that didn't really surprise them that much. Much less him, seeing as how normal that was for Orcs apparently. "* i tested the bike by the way. pretty solid as it is, but the wheels were pretty messed up."

Alphys giggled. "* Thought so. They're actually supposed to give in first, to slow it down and prevent worse accidents."

"* then it sure worked like it's supposed to. think ya can improve the finished thing a bit on that?"

At some point, when they all sat there in their two little pairs with one skeleton in each, each one with a cone of ice cream, except for Sans who had gotten himself a human-made hot dog, the humans walking up and down and some of which were heading on stage from the curtain to make some adjustment, made it clear that it was gonna start pretty soon. Without much of a big entrance though, a woman in her fourties in a suit with bound-together in part dyed-blonde, in part greyed out hair stepped forward, and adjusted the wireless microphone to properly point at her, before picking it up. "* Good morning, Enkate City. When I first came here eight years ago..." An official had stepped forward from behind the curtain and was holding a set of large signs, of which he next pulled up one reading 'Cheer', which was an order the crowd obeyed. The woman turned to one side of her audience, where there was a large screen pointing right in her direction. The woman turned to one side of her audience, where there was a large screen pointing right in her direction. The mayor began holding her prepared speech, facing from prompter to prompter, accompanied by her staffer holding up signs to instruct the audience on how to react.

"* Wrong.". Alphys - knowingly or not, mumbled objections to herself when the mayor said certain things. In the middle of the mayor's speech at that.

"* ...nonetheless I am so happy to see how far we have come and to see this city become a forward-thinking haven for all our new citizens..."

"* Invaders."

"* ...who will improve our culture by great lengths."

He had probably say something before she would embarrass herself because someone else heard her. "* uhm...is there something wrong?"

She really seemed to be mentally absent and not really aware of her little comments, seeing from how shaken up she was when he interrupted her apparent thoughts. "* Oh, sorry, was I saying this out loud? I...that place online you saw me at is really getting to me." She tried to laugh it off, but her face had all the telltale signs of someone who was facing some real big cognitive dissonance and was fighting back her itch to do something about it. "* Sorry about that, I'll keep quiet."

No, she didn't need to. "* it's okay, i should get to using this thing anyway." Sans held his scanner back up to get a lock on some of the people that hadn't been here before and the ones that were only passing by. As usual, nothing. Until to make himself a bit more comfortable, he swung around the device with one hand to support himself and shuffle into a better position, when for a very brief moment, he caught a glimpse of something that didn't make sense at first. He was pretty sure he just imagined that from thinking the worst, but after a while of doing what he was doing, he got curious anyway and swung it around with both hands, looking at it. There it flashed up again, it seemed to target someone somewhere there with the bars and numbers shooting way high. It must have been somewhere in the middle where he wasn't looking otherwise. He tried carefully going from person to person in the centre of the crowd. Nothing. He went from employee to employee, gave every apparent staff member a good scan. He was already having a really bad feeling.

Even the staff didn't turn out any results. Then, slowly and while it dawned on him, he turned it slightly upwards and when the system targeted the mayor, the figures sprang back up. Her LOVE was high. Not medieval-one-man-army-Asgore high, but way past mass-murder-spree-Frisk high. When Alphys turned around to see it, there she went. "* Oh god..." Sans shushed her up. For Mrs. Wimble to collect this much LOVE...unless there was an entire town somewhere, dead with no survivors all killed by this one woman, she must have been gathering all this EXP over a long, long time. Decades even. She must have been killing people since she was at most a teen. The most likely thing was that she was a... "* She's a serial kMMph" His hand quickly shot up to stuff the crazed lizard's mouth.

He turned his face to her with his blue light running. "* i'm gonna take it away, and you're gonna keep quiet. capiche?"

Still terrified from what she had seen, the lizard nodded and stayed silent even after he withdrew. As if nothing had happened, at least after the while that it took for Alphys to really settle down, they continued to listen to all the platitudes, promises and thin plays at empathy. Alphys was really glad when it was over and could rush back so they could quickly leave together, but judging from what the mayor had said, she really did intend to have some sorta event where she would meet up with some Monsters. What that would be like, they couldn't take from it, but she did refer to their 'king', so she was gonna ask Asgore to show up sooner or later. Once everyone was at home, Sans and Alphys took it upon themselves to head to the castle. Outside, he was overseeing the work that was done below, together with the grown human that was at his side for advice. "* U-u-uhm. A-a-a."

Sans couldn't listen to how her suppressed state of panic kept her from saying anything. "* we've gotta talk." Their king put his cup down, shuffled his chair back and turned around to face the two of them. "* we've got bad news."

Alphys pushed him aside. "* It's the mayor! The mayor's..." Sans gave her a painful nudge with the elbow and nodded in William's direction. "* No - I - the mayor of the city wants to meet you!"

Understandably, Asgore didn't understand how that was bad news. "* sure, sounds nice, she sure is a pretty - LOVE-ly person. Very open. She's got a lotta - LOVE to give."

Their king closed his eyes for a second. His smile faded and he turned back to the table. "* If the mayor of this city wants to meet me, how can I object? Even if I wanted to, they would interpret it as me objecting to her, and I can't risk Monsters facing another coincidental attack of giant wildlife." While he sipped from his cup, Alphys asked him why wasn't more worried about this. "* Now that I know I'm dealing with a grown person and - well - what you more or less told me, I will have no problems."

"* Are you really sure?", the trembling lizard gibbered. She was really afraid for his life there.

Asgore closed his eyes for a second again, and when he opened them, he had a special look on his face. "* Trust me, Alphys. I will be fine." It was that exact look he had on their second day on the surface. When he heard about Chief K'Tenga kidnapping some little boy just to get Asgore's attention. It was the look of a person that was intent on killing if it were to become a necessity. And he had seen in the past, how Asgore was very well capable of acting on that intention. Alphys didn't seem very convinced, but that didn't change the fact that this was settled for the time being. Sans more or less knew that it would be like this, and once not faced with a moral dilemma, his own LOVE was more than enough to match that of the serial killing mayor they had. Next up in this regard was to wait it out and keep the kid's attention on it, when it happened. That would probably ensure that it all either went smoothly, or would never happen, giving them another shot at figuring out what to do. The rest of the day went the way he had planned on the day before. He brought Alphys back down to the lab, so she could work on her finished product, while Sans got all his expanded stands ready to keep all the workers fed and refreshed. They were all happy to see that Sans really had real big piles of bags of goods stored and ready this time and that there was more to choose from. Supplying the entire village, even some humans here and there was really profitable. It was a lot more tiring than the day before, too. Even after all this, towards the last hour, he ran out of goods in some areas. He guessed he needed to talk to one or two distributors.

The next morning, he wasn't woken up. When he did bother to get up, Papyrus was already busy working on preparing for his classes. This wasn't even a test, it was just the classes starting. This was just how set he was to be sure to get a driver's license. Sans on the other hand didn't bother him for too long. He headed straight to the lab. And knocked on the door. Again and louder, each time he came to the conclusion that the previous time wasn't loud enough. He eventually just swiped his gravity towards the lab door and walked up the wall to the area above where he knew she slept and resumed his knocking there. When he finally felt the slow motions of someone stumbling along the solid floor beside him, he headed back downstairs and jumped off the wall to the ground, just before the doors slid open. A groggy lizard in a pajama stood behind it, with her face covered in the residue of cheese flips and a disgruntled fish behind her. "* Sans, why?"

"* it's never too early to get started." After a resigned yawn, the two of them disappeared back inside, soon to come back dressed and a bit less tired. "* still got bed spikes i see." He didn't expect her to fall for that, but she really did put her hand behind her head to see if there was anything different there. "* ya said you were getting done with something?" She was still scratching her head, when they were heading down with the elevator.

"* I really want to work a bit more on it first."

He shrugged. "* all the better. still got something to check today." Alphys was already waking up and smiling at him with raising eyebrows. "* no, not a super villain. probably not." Once in the assembly chamber, she showed him what he did have. All the values seemed pretty damn solid. If she did something that would improve more on her finished wheels, that thing would last through everything he could possibly encounter. In fact he wasn't getting in what way it was supposed to not be finished, except for the wheel thing, for which she said she already had a workaround. Now that Alphys was in place, finishing up with this bike, it was time to check what kinda super villain this mayor Wimble was. It was probably bet not to get all up in this business anyway, but it was always a good idea to have a heads up. Finding the city hall was the easy part. The harder one was to spot when anything weird or important was happening. On the inside, the place looked really expensive. The edges of all walls were extensively decorated with carvings that were along all the frames, the halls were really big, at least on the ground floor, and the floor was always covered with shiny, smooth and elegantly laid out tiles.

He didn't have to ask for it, but found what he was looking for anyway. There was a little corner where he could sit as inconspicuously as someone like him in a building full of surface people could and enjoy a hot cat in peace. Of course it was pretty good to have a place to sit from which he could see anyone pass by who had been to the mayor's office, without actually sitting anywhere near the office. Next up was to wait. Whatever he was looking for, he would probably recognize it. He just relaxed and kept leaning against the wall aside the two hallways, both of which led to where this Mrs. Wimble probably was. Sitting there, staring down the long staircase of this massive hall. Until eventually, something showed up that did draw his attention. A very nervous-looking mid-thirties woman in rough clothes was pacing in through the exit and rushing straight up the stairs. She eyed him with a very suspicious - suspicious in both ways - look on her face and headed straight for the office. He first didn't think there was so much to it, but after spending pretty little time in the office, she stormed right out again, looking back at Sans almost every step of the way. That look was the look of a person who really didn't want to be followed by some stranger. Exactly what he was waiting for.

As soon as she thought herself to be in a safe distance, she turned around and left the building, which was his cue to get up, zap himself down to the bottom floor and follow her corner by corner. After one single turn to get to another side of the city hall, got into a bus she apparently had the keys for and started driving away. Following her was easy. She probably didn't think it possible that someone could follow her, especially not him with him being too small to drive a car. Nonetheless Sans tailed her turn after turn, road after road. She was going pretty far, even past two roadways, until she eventually came to a place with a lotta small, hastily built houses. Orcs of various shades between brown-ish and pitch black were walking left and right. Probably one of those 'Orc refuges' Sans heard the reporters mention in the past. Staying always around a corner from that human woman, Sans stayed hear her and eavesdropped on what she was saying. He did see her hand out money bills and ask for more Orcs to gather around and follow her. What he heard her say was that they would get the second part when they were done. Soon enough, a whole growd of them first gathered and then got into the extra big bus.

He kept a bit more of a distance, there were more eyes looking out of that bus now after all. Where was she taking the savages, and who was she going to sick them on? She headed back into the city, to the town hall of an outer district, where she herded them outside and into the building. The suspicious skeleton snuck inside from an opposite entrance, to see if it was something immediate and violent that he would need to step in at. But when he looked inside, there wasn't much happening. A few officials stood on one side, with a few empty glass boxes with lots of letters inside. The Orcs that were herded in here, got in line and wrote something on a letter, each one had one of them, and passed their letters through the slit into the glass box. Eventually, despite him trying to inconspicuously spy from behind a counter, he was seen, so he just leaned onto the opposite wall to pretend not to care.

Once they were done, he quickly asked someone what all this is. He was already suspecting it from seeing one of the names - the one they all crossed - on the letters that lay ready in piles to be that of Jaclyn Wimble. It was a polling station. Those were ballots to gauge how the people were gonna vote. Before he could ask too many questions though, he had to leave to keep up with the bus. After quite another stretch into another nearby town, they were again in town hall, Sans again found another exit to enter through, and watched as those same Orcs were casting their vote again. Something couldn't be right here. Even if they could just vote, didn't that basically mean they got to vote twice? This time he stood in the doorway on the opposite side of the hall, relaxed and clearly visible for everyone with his hands in his pockets. The woman spotted him and already shot him a glare. She probably thought that intimidated him. If she was used to that, then humans sure were easy to scare. He retreated back outside and followed them to the next polling station. The same thing happened a third time. On the fourth one, she interrupted what she was doing, went straight up to the still motionless skeleton and bent forward so as to look down at him from above. "* I don't know how you're doing this, but stop it!"

He just stepped back and put up his hands in defeat. "* hey, i've never seen ya before. do we know each other?" Furious about his feigned ignorance, she stomped away. Luckily, this spiel worked out. She did try sending two Orcs, but what were they gonna do? Whenever they tried coming up to him, he happened to be somewhere way away. One time they even got close enough that one of them could raise a hand at him, but the hand had a bad time and they quickly hasted back to the bus. Hall after hall, after hall, polling station after polling station, until they went back to the same camp to give the brute tag-alongs the second part of their pay. This was much more harmless than Sans suspected. No major mass murder plot, no massive conspiracy, just simple, plain old voter fraud. Or at least the preparation for it. But if she needed to prepare for a result that differed from what the polls would yield without this, then it was probably not all that clean either. He hadn't even ever witnessed this representative democracy stuff, only heard all these horror stories from the doc about how it's easy to game, how it foregoes the will and interests of the people and all that stuff. Then again, he also went on about how murdering all Elves would solve all the world's problems, so who knew what of what he said was true and what was just him being crazy?

After seeing the things that he saw, Sans retreated. As far as he could tell, this mayor was simply a politician who was also a serial killer. Getting caught up in either first thing after seeing her for the first time, woulda involved Monsters in things they didn't need right now. He had spent long enough hunting after Orcs, time to check up what Alphys put together. "* O-oh, you're already back."

"* ya got anything for me?" According to what she had on the screen, it was done. And she knew how to turn it on, so he wasn't sure why there wasn't a finished bike here.

"* I-I wanted to run some simulations first, to see if it will work." He stayed in place, shook his head and gave a nod towards the big button. The lizard hesitantly stepped back closer, raised her claw and smashed the button, shouting "* Rise, my creation!" The assembly chamber got working, but Sans was pretty well aware that forging with these materials would take a little longer.

He did wait for a few seconds, but then he shrugged. "* welp, guess we better kill some time." He opened the door behind him and in the next room, before Alphys had too much time to inspect the stuff on the tables, grabbed the bouncy ball and threw it on the floor in front of him.

When she noticed him heading on, the lizard rushed after him, while he followed the ball through the many rooms. On the entire way from here, to the stairs it didn't slow down or come to a stop. He picked it up and launched it high enough to set of to bounce down a much longer corridor, and when it was about to reach one of the distant rooms, Alphys finally asked: "* Why is it not slowing down? Or jumping lower? This isn't supposed to be possible."

"* yeah, deformation, friction and all, right? not to this one. this one goes on forever." When it finally bounced up a wall, he picked it up to set it off to lead them back down the hallway they came through. "* that's the thing about it. it keeps going on. probably not forever." He would have shown her more, but it wasn't gonna take that long, and most of the stuff wasn't as harmless as this. When they arrived, the apparatus was already finished and all the tools were retracting. "* so let's see what we got."

He headed up on the platform to take a closer look at it. "* I added some elastic chains on the inside, that way you can drive it as smoothly as with normal tires, but it survives harder conditions than otherwise." It was all in deep blue, the zig-zag pattern of a flash of lightning was painted on the bars, and on one of them it bore a logo with his name on it. She couldn't resist and had made him a superhero bike. It even had 'Sansmobile' written on a small corner just next to one of the wheels. He flashed the lizard a glare that looked annoyed enough for her to cower together. "* I-I-I'M sorry, I just couldn't resist, okay?" His look softened and he smiled. It was kinda on par with the impression she was probably getting of all this after all. Sans pointed at a small, rectangular device below the seat, with a covered button, the panel to which could be slid aside, probably to help secure it from being pressed while driving with this thing. "* A little thing I added. Can we go back up first?"

Sans stared at her for a few seconds, but relaxed after that. "* okay."

Back in front of Alphys' ground floor computer, they came to a stop, so she could start some application. When she clicked on a button and spoke into the microphone, something happened. "* Hello? Hello?" Her voice echoed from the blue tricycle. "* Hello?" In fact, when Sans tried listening from different positions, it seemed a lot like it was coming from everywhere, the whole thing was resonating with her voice. "* That's not everything." She made a little adjustment at the front, and the live feed on her big screen at the side switched to the the front of the 'Sansmobile', and turned when Sans tried turning it left and right. "* I can remove all of these things any time, but with them on, I can see where you are and what you see."

He was a bit more skeptical about this. "* How, and what if someone else tries to tap in?"

She appeared to expect this. "* Right now - you're right. But I have an idea how to prevent that. I'll need more time for that. Why? Do you already have someone who would want to? Already?" He got what she was getting to, but he dropped it for the time being and preferred not even to give her a chance to go there. He picked up the bike and headed outside. Finding a stretch to test it at wasn't hard, seeing as he already had one. There was nothing new to test though, he knew there wasn't gonna be a problem. At some point, when there wasn't any forest to the side of the roadway, but little hills, which he used as ramps to drive over and launch himself into the air. "* Watch out! What?" Alphys' alarmed voice echoed from the beams of the vehicle while he was in the air. If there was gonna be someone in the way, he could just teleport into the sky. Even though it only looked like a tricycle, after a single little bounce, it settled on the grass and soon the road, as if nothing had happened. "* Whew, didn't think you would do that."

"* i've gotta know what it's got." After following a few routes back to a familiar forested area, he saw to speeding as fast as he could through the curves and once safely away from any cars, hit the breaks. Off to the side, he waited for a few minutes and picked up the bike to turn around the front wheel and inspect all sides of it. Not the faintest scratch. He was using it the way nothing like it was supposed to be used, yet it seemed like it was brand-new. "* you've done some quality work there."

Her laugh sounded embarrassed. "* Hehe...thank you. Uh...could you go somewhere where nobody's watching?"

What was this about? Well, couldn't be anything too bad, so he shrugged and carried 'her' off without a word, until he was in the dark between a few trees. "* so what now?"

"* Please give me a second...Uh...so the little box behind the seat..." He got off and knelt down next to the bike to get a close look at it. It had a panel that was covering an inside area, presumably with something inside. "* Do you see anything happening?" As they slid aside one after the other, the one panel turned out to be several layered above one another, until they revealed a button, that he described to her. "* I want you to press it and then take a few steps distance. Let's hope this works." When he did as she suggested and got out of the way, a similar set of sounds were emitted by the box. A different, previously unseen panel slid aside, that left behind three slits from which shining lines stretched themselves out into the area next to the bike. They extended further and further and formed the outlines of a large cube. It was a bit bigger than the usual dimensional boxes, but he recognized an opening DBox when he saw one. "* Stay where you are." When he could finally look inside, all he saw was the inside of some room in the dark parts of the lab that the lizard had had access too.

After waiting for quite some time, he could hear the distant wheezing and panting of an overweight person rushing closer as fast as she could. And predictably, it was Alphys. After half-way jumping through the last, short corridor that had the interior of a DBox, she rested on her knees and took a breather. "* I...yeah now...I can come to help wherever...you go." Well the idea was kinda...a thing. Not far-fetched, not groundbreaking either but it was something. She created a completely normal, larger DBox but with two opening areas that opened up to separate points. Probably both dependant on whatever tech was keeping their end up. It was accessible from two sides and so became a kind of warp gate or portal device in it's function. And he could probably still use it to store stuff. Lots of stuff if both ends were opened. "* So? How do you like it?"

"* seems pretty useful. but you better get this thing secure." She gestured him to stop before he could go on.

Alphys, now relieved and proud to hear her work commended, leaned onto one of the trees. "* So, Sans. There is something I always wanted to know." He was already looking at her, but came closer to listen to what she had to ask. "* Everything about all this stuff...big lab, past as a scientist, super speed, machine that detects bad people...it all screams super hero. Why don't you like hearing me call it that?"

Of course she would never drop this, would she? With all these comics from the far east that she read, there was no way she didn't pick up a few - maybe even some old ones - from the west. "* ya know, about that..." He couldn't even look at her when he was talking about this stuff. He stayed right next to her, but turned around to face off to the distance. "* i used to really like this kinda thing. super heroes i mean. i was way into this stuff. own super hero name, own costume and all. way awkward now. i guess what i mean is...i just outgrew it. but you're right though. i've been thinking about this, ever since we came back up here." He had no reason to be embarrassed. He turned back to face her. After all, he didn't have a blabbermouth who was just out to find a story. He had a sidekick. "* i won't need a costume, or a super hero name, i'd even like to go without any super villains. but if i can make things better up here, i wanna do that. slowly and on my own time. and for the time being, only necessarily when it's about monsters." She didn't quite seem to understand. "* all the super heroes have this little story arc sooner or later, where they've gotta question how much of their time they should be super heroes and save people, and how much of it they can take for themselves. and most of the time, it leads to them feeling that their powers or whatever makes them special meaning they've gotta spend all the time they can to use it to do good. which usually ends with things spinning way outta control and the people they care about taking the hit. i wanna skip that arc. completely. if i'm gonna help people, i'm gonna help people when i feel like it, if i feel like it. i've gotta look out for papyrus and all you guys, first and foremost. anyone else is secondary. no hero's burden or responsibility. just a harmless-looking skeleton. ya think you're up for that?" He offered his hand for a shake.

It took her a while to wrap her head around this, but in the end, she reached out for his hand and a shake sealed the deal. "* T-to helping whenever we feel like it then."

"*when ever. We. Feel like it." They agreed not to do that thing at all for the time being, until everyone had safely settled down on the surface, and soon Sans found himself spending and wrapping up the rest of the day the same way he always had. Selling hot dogs and other foods as if nothing had happened.


	29. Hefty Careers

A Doctor's Duty

Chapter 18

Hefty Careers

* * *

"One stimulus that humans have been conditioned to respond to in a distinct pattern is the invocation of coincidences. The core flaw, that humans are primed to always make when analyzing situations, is that they misinterpret the implications of a rare coincidence. While they are right to think that a rare coincidence is in itself rare, they fail to understand the implications when it actually occurs. Namely that, in the event that it does occur although it is unlikely from a mathematical standpoint - especially when such 'rare coincidences' occur not so rarely - it is rarely really a coincidence. Because if it was, it would happen somewhere between very rarely and not at all. To maintain this fallacy, that is where the use of artificially tainted labels comes in.

If there is anything you don't want humans to think or ask questions about, call it a conspiracy theory. The mere mention of that word terrifies them, because they obsess so much over what others think about them and they associate it with controlled nonsense theories about lizardmen, devil-worshiping cults and aliens. Monsters appear on the surface and very soon after that, a super hero shoes up in the same area? Coincidence. The super hero IS a Monster? Conspiracy theory. A politician moves from one city to another and at the same time, so does a series of crimes? Pure coincidence. The politician IS the one committing the crimes? Conspiracy theory. The CORE is an infinite power source? Conspiracy theory. PR firms staging protests? Conspiracy theory. Monsters can gain incredible power by taking human souls? Conspiracy theory. Just invoke these words whenever there is something you don't want humans to think about, and call them as many names that imply them to be paranoid or mentally ill as possible. They are conditioned for this to work on them."

* * *

They didn't get to have a good, long sleep the following night either. This time not because of Sans, but because Alphys had set the alarm clock and insisted that they got up. Undyne yawned and only hesitantly came down the conveyor belt. "* What is it that can't wait?"

"* It can wait, but I wanted to do this yesterday. This time we're heading out early so we have time after getting together."

Undyne was still rubbing her eye when she followed the doctor down to the computer. It had tabs of various very dull-looking websites open. "* It's about our careers. When Asgore announced that Monsters could sign up to live up there, he also said we need to work. I asked around and looked a few things up. Work that pays needs preparation. The humans are crazy. There is nothing entry-level that you can realistically rely on getting into. Any profession - even trades - take three years before you can find paid work. And even then, the labor market's so oversaturated, we better get as overqualified as we can. Everyone has to." Undyne was still waking up, occasionally sneaking a peek of what was on the screen. Several of the things Alphys had open were forums relating to university and several other tabs showed her the place they were headed. "* We can commute back and forth to Enkate University from up there. That's close enough. They have prep class and events for orientation about now, but won't be up to apply for long." She opened up Undernet to show the profiles of several Monsters. "* If we work ahead with a few Monsters though, maybe we can get the uni to make an exception for us." She sounded more like she was trying to convince herself than Undyne. "* Because we only came here such a short time ago. I've asked several people that are ready to come." The first two profiles were those of Bratty and Catty, a tall alleygator and a rounded purple alleycat, who shared the same profile picture and who's posts mostly consisted of short praises of banale things. Then came Sam, a really fat, orange man-drake and the librarian of Snowdin. The rest were just herself, Alphys, and the skeletons. "* I asked Mettaton, but he seemed pretty busy - all the more busy when I told him what I was up to." Before they went on though, Alphys got up to lead the way to Waterfall. It appeared that there was onemore thing, one Monster who didn't have an Undernet profile.

"* Old man Gerson? Really?"

Alphys tried to smile. "* I wanted to have at least two people from every nearby area, so when we're done, word gets around what it's like. Two from the New Home Outskirts, two from Hotland, two from Snowdin and two from Waterfall. If word gets around, people who are not suited might cancel their claim to a house because they'd rather have a comfortable life down here. And he gets around."

"* What about Asgore?"

"* Doesn't want to leave the village no matter what. At least not that regularly."

Undyne nodded while they passed the long bridge above the menacing stalagmites. "* Makes sense I guess."

Alphys picked out her phone and opened up a list of weird names on the Enkate U website. "* What we're doing in our lives, depends on which of these courses we pick." She handed her phone to Undyne, who would see what those lists were. 'Tech Management', 'Transnational Trade', what was all this? "* I've slowly been looking into this and looking around when alone. Among other things. You're going to have to ask yourself: What do you want to do?"

She ran an arm around the lizard. "* I wanna be with you."

"* Aww thank you - but seriously, you're not going to be happy with what you do if you don't like it for yourself. Liking it because I do won't be enough forever."

"* Right." She did have a point. Undyne probably wasn't going to like doing Alphys' science stuff forever. She didn't get the least bit of it as it was, even the more interesting bits, she mostly fazed out and just made affirming noises when Alphys was rattling off about whatever she went on about.

Half-way to their destination, they were met with an up and running skeleton and a short one that was half-asleep yet somehow keeping up. "WE WERE SUMMONED?" He came closer to inspect the list that Undyne was browsing through. "IS THIS IT?"

Alphys turned around to the skeleton that had rushed straight past her. and laughed awkwardly. "* Sort of. Thought about what you want already?"

"TO PROTECT MONSTERS AND BRING HUMANS AT MY FEET! IS THERE SOMETHING ROYAL GUARD...-EY?" He raised the upper ends of his eyesockets at her, apparently begging her to help him on this.

"* Well, I can think of something..." Alphys was punched on the elbow by who could only be Undyne, but if this was what Papyrus asked, how could she deny this? "* The Royal Guard used to uphold law and order too. So there would be the police."

"POLICE? POLICING THE PUBLIC! HELPING THOSE IN NEED" His googly eyes were hanging out and sparkling. "MAYBE RUSHING IN IN TIMES OF NEED AND SAVING THE DAY! YES! THIS IS IT!" He had put together his hands and was slightly tipping up and down on his feet. Giving him these kinds of ideas earned Alphys a menacing glare from Papyrus' marine friend.

"* That's one stop on the way then." In front of old man Gerson's junk shop, the Snowdin librarian was already waiting. "* So it's already time.", the old turtle noted. "* Pretty fast between telling me this is happening and it happening." The old man came closer, still uncertainly placing his walking stick ahead.

Undyne wasn't so sure about this. "* You really want to go up there and work every day?"

He banged her head with his stick and scolded her. "* I'll have you know I'm a tough nut, and I've still got a good sixty to one hundred and twenty years in me!" Before they could all leave, Alphys took a winded detour into a far-away part of Hotland, to an art club that nobody but her seemed to know of, and came back with a fat slob of a dragaroo, orange and brown skin, long, scruffy brown hair, his mouth as covered in cheese flip pieces as Alphys' was sometimes, but dressed in nothing but a beret and a vest that covered almost nothing. She was lucky he had such a big stomach that covered so much. Undyne would rather not look at him for too long. Or spend too much time thinking about what hole Alphys scratched him up from.

Once they had enough distance from everyone else, she bent down to whisper in Alphys' ear. "* Okay, this fat guy, how's he going to spread the word on what Uni is like."

But she was just met with a shrug. "* It was either him, a Pyrope or bringing a talking plane that bumps into stuff into a city with skyscrapers." Okay, maybe this guy wasn't the worst choice she could make.

With everyone together, they had to walk the last bit a little slower for the turtle to keep up with them, and once they were outside and everyone was covering their eyes from the blinding sun, the war veteran scared the living hell out of them as he walked a few steps towards the edge of the cliff. "* That I'd live to see that thing once again." He took a deep breath, and after a few moments, everyone else had gotten used to how bright it was up here. All of a sudden, he was full of life, marching forward in a way that put into question why he was using a walking stick to begin with."* Rightey then! Show me what those twenty-first-century universities look like. They still so focused on proving right their man-in-the-sky stories?"

Alphys tried to laugh this off, but she didn't seem to know what he was talking about either. And you probably had to have been around before the barrier was even a thing to know. What did surprise everyone positively though. The two that were leading their little group of future students had to haste forward and look back again and again, to make sure that nobody was getting lost. At least half of them must have never been this far away from the cliff. On the train to the inner city, it took a few niches for them to find space for everyone to sit together. The skeletons sat down with Sam, the librarian and Gerson, who all were fixed on taking in the many places they were rushing past, while Alphys and Undyne occupied one niche with Alphys' apparent old friends. "* Oh - Emm - Gee!" The beaming cat was almost shaking in her seat. "* I'm like so hyped for college on the surface!"

The alley-gator just affirmed her. "* Yeah, right?"

She pulled on Alphys' hand to be sure to have her attention. "* You read all these magazines on college life too, right? Right?"

Bratty dismissed Catty's worry. "* There's no way - just no way you missed out on that!"

Alphys and Undyne gave each other a questioning look. The doctor tried to carefully pry into what it was that they were talking about. "* Why? What about it?"

The street Monsters' eyes widened, and after exchanging a glance, came to grips with her not really knowing what they were on about. "* It's from dusk till dawn, drinking, having fun and partaying!"

"* We're gonna get so wasted every night. And meet so many human boys!"

The fish' jaws were starting to lay bare, and her eye was shifting downwards towards the shrugging lizard. "* You didn't tell me that's what it's like..."

"* It's not, not really. It really isn't."

Luckily, the disappointment of her old friends meant that they weren't one-hundred percent certain of what they were talking about either. All of the thick fluffy purple was pulling together in shock and Bratty was covering her mouth. "* What?"

"* But all those magazines! The club fliers! The college party movies!"

"* I don't know anything for sure at all, but I'm pretty certain that's not what it's like." Alphys didn't like spoiling their fun, but better to be open about it like this, than have them back themselves into a corner they can't escape from later. Things grew a little more silent, once it dawned on their two possible future colleagues that the kinds of excesses they were dreaming of probably wouldn't fly well in the long run, and the rest of the ride to their first station wasn't a very lively one for them.

Outside, on the streets of central Enkate, Alphys led the way, cell phone in hand, with most of them forcing the rest to come to a stop then and when to marvel at the new surroundings, most of the time the shop windows that displayed probably expensive wares that none of them had seen before. At least not iterations of them as current as these. And many times, someone needed reminding that stopping in the wrong places was dangerous because of all the cars occasionally passing through the roads that they crossed. Humans, Orcs, Naga, the shops with electronic devices of unseen sophistication. The cheap and probably slightly poisonous foods in flashy packages that had become a staple of Mettaton's and other copycats' shops in the Underground, were here as the originals that had inspired them. And in new brands, one of which Bratty didn't want to go without.

When they turned to reach a comparably longer and broader road, they saw the wide, white building with small windows across it's length and width and a spacious parking lot that Alphys pointed at to tell them that it was their destination. "SOMEHOW I FEEL LIKE COOKIES RIGHT NOW.", Papyrus brought in, the moment the building came into his field of view.

"* Say what?" Undyne had a bit of trouble believing what she heard, considering who it came from.

"COME ON, SANS, WE PASSED A BAKERY RIGHT OVER THERE." Without any room for objection, both skeletons were gone. Sans seemed almost as surprised as Alphys was, but came along without any objections.

"* what is it you're cookie-ing up?"

"SANS, THEY'RE GETTING WORSE."

He stopped in front of the store. "* yeah, al-dough you're being really weird. what's going on?"

"I HAVE NO IDEA. I JUST FEEL LIKE A BOX OF COOKIES RIGHT NOW." Lucky enough, the place did sell 'em in boxes in case this sudden appetite would come back over time, and sooner than they thought, they were headed for that place Alphys was leading them to.

The doctor was standing in front of the parking lot, typing and dialing something on her phone. "* If I'm right, this would be the Enkate city police department. It goes way back behind this place." She pointed at the right corner, where the parking lot led further down into the block. "* No harm in asking, I guess."

The first room they came to, when entering, was a narrow corridor. There were only very high and narrow windows to both sides, and the ceiling was pretty low in comparison to other human buildings. There were doors between the walls of white bricks with grey concrete between them, but they were all closed and it probably wasn't a good idea to check if they were locked. A little further down, it already reached a corner that turned to the left, with a reception next to it, but before they got to that, they were approached by an official in the shirt, trousers and suspenders of a police uniform, but a jacket and tie over them. "* Are you lost?", he asked with a very urgent tone. He had greying hair, and distinctive facial features, the look of which startled the taller skeleton for a moment.

This was the moment Alphys had to sell it. Somehow. She had no idea, what was she going to do? Papyrus had asked for something like the royal guard, this was just the first thing that came to mind. "* W-w-we were going to..."

Before she could make things any worse, Undyne pushed herself past her and chimed in. "* We're looking around what jobs we want. And me and Papyrus here were told to check out what you guys do."

The man had a pretty grim expression on his face and appeared to be about to shoo them away. Who could blame them? They were a group of weird-looking strangers, armed with magic and coming to their HQ out of nowhere. The only reason they weren't alarmed, was that they neither appeared to be dangerous, nor were in much of a hurry to enter. Just when the - judging from his special badge and star - police chief - was raising his voice, Undyne pulled Papyrus to the front to show who she was talking about. Not a really wise decision in hindsight to hold up an armored skeleton in front of the guy in charge. More and more nervous due to the current situation, the skeleton stretched out his hands which were still holding onto his open and half-empty cookie box. "COOKIE?"

The strict-looking law enforcer froze for a second. Upon seeing the cookies, his eyes widened and his expression softened up. "* Yes, actually. " He grabbed one and bit off a piece. "* Thank you." He took a moment to look around the corner. Further inside was a wide office area with cells and small desks, officials were either walking up and down to move documents from place to place, or sitting on their desks either talking on the phone or browsing something on their computers. "* Tell you what, we're not that busy today anyway, so - a tour would be a bit much, but how about this?" He shouted into the office area. "* Larry! You got anyting to do today?"

Another police officer in a jacked rushed to his side. As some of the Monsters could observe, didn't wear the same star and his badge was a bit different. The first one they were talking to was probably his superior. "* Just finishing some reports. Why - woah!" He shrugged together upon seeing what was standing right around the corner. Not one, but all the whats that were standing there. He did proceed to greet them, once he had gotten himself together. "* Uh, hello. Saw you all on TV, right? Oh thanks." While the Monsters confirmed his guess, he saw the cookie box and simply grabbed one without asking.

The chief spoke up again. "* Apparently these two want to know what being on the force is like. How 'bout you two head over to his place and get to ask him yourselves? That's the best I'm offering though." The look on their faces was enough for him to take as a 'Yes'. Undyne wasn't happy with Papyrus being with them on all this, but she sure could convince him to reconsider following the same path as her, especially now that they were going to ask this officer what it was like. At least she hoped so. It involved solving conflicts in situations where sometimes there was no nice way to do it. Papyrus didn't have it in him to really hurt anyone. Not the way you would have to from time to time. Before she was done thinking about this, they had separated from Alphys and the rest, who would head to the uni. She had her phone number, so there wasn't a reason to worry about finding to each other later on. The two remaining Monsters were led further inside, through a door on the side into a smaller office room. The human caught his breath, walked past his table and sat down. The walls, as uncomfortable-looking as before, were decorated with little framed pictures. The room had a table and a few chairs, two of which she and Papyrus grabbed to sit down. On the table stood the cloggy screen of an old computer, and at the side of it was a - somehow - loose hanging pinwall on a stand, with articles from newspapers, pictures from newspapers and simple photos stuck and glued to it. From the common theme that she recognized through some of them, they were pictures of the policeman they were here with.

"* All right, you got me. I'm Lieutenant Larry Brixton and I like to brag. This is my brag wall." On the newspaper pictures, he was only ever at the side or somewhere off to the corner. "* I like to remind myself of past cases I helped with. Now to you two, nice to meet you."

The two Monsters introduced themselves. But Lieutenant? She knew the rank, but that reminded her that - especially if they went through law enforcement too, she'd have to catch up on how human ranks worked. From then on in, they would go back and forth between asking him specific questions and him just generally telling about all the procedures that his work involved. It sure was going to be easy from here. Or at least, so Undyne thought. All she had to do was..."* So, if there's a bad guy on the run, or he's pointing a gun at you, what are you supposed to do?"

As she had hoped, Larry wordlessly undid some safety straps, pulled a firearm out of it's holster and placed it on the table. "* If they're running, you give a warning shot."

"AND THEN THEY YIELD AND YOU CAPTURE THEM."

He wasn't going to dodge this one that easily. She had to press them on this one. "* So what if he doesn't yield?"

But the officer had the skeleton's back. "* You go for the legs..."

"THEN YOU CAPTURE THEM."

"* And what if he's pointing a gun at you?"

"* You go for arms or any non-lethal areas."

"* AND THEN YOU CAPTURE THEM."

She sighed and covered her face in one hand. These guys were hopeless. She had to go at this in a different way. Maybe she could hold up the sinister sides just from what she had seen. "* So, pretty early on after we fist came up here, there was a bunch of Orks who kidnapped and murdered two humans..."

He shook his head. It did make him a bit tense, but he concealed that to Papyrus. She could see better. "* No, if you mean the accident at Farfoot village, that's just a conspiracy theory. The Orcs never murdered anyone."

Papyrus was there too, he had seen it and so had she. "* We were right there..."

But Larry, with his eyes closed, was raising his voice so much, it interrupted her. "* I've read the police report on it, there was nothing more going on there than what you've already seen in the news." Close enough, but like this, he could just deny knowing anything under the implied assumption that whoever wrote the report was lying. Nonetheless, this had to already chip away at Papyrus' confidence in this. That was all that she needed.

For the time being, she dropped it and they continued with their little introductions on what this field of work was like. Even for this, they were going to have to study something. For on-the-ground cop work, criminology. Just when things were nowhere near as tense as they had been before, the officer remembered something that seemed to be on the screen. "* Crap! The Huxley case! You two stay put, I'll be right back!" He grabbed a few specific sheets of paper, put them in a little folder and ran off outside. "* Chief Reinfield!"

Finally among themselves, at least that. She turned around to face the skeleton that was still trying to digest all the things he had been told. "* Pretty fishy all this, huh?"

His eyesockets narrowed and he stayed still for a moment. But after that, they relaxed again and pointed at her. "GOOD ONE."

He got up, and she quickly noticed that she had sparked his curiosity. He was giving Larry's wall of self-indulgence a bit of a closer inspection, read one of the articles and then traced down the whole of it. When he touched it, they both noticed that it really was somehow loosely hanging there, and when his hand reached the bottom, it came to a string that was attached to the roll that was hanging down here. "* Wait - Papyrus, no!" By the time she realized what he was going to do, it was already too late. He pulled at it, let go, it snapped and pulled the roll of paper that was merely hanging over the actual pin wall, back up in a clumsy manner. This time, the articles weren't just stuck, but really pinned to the wall, and this pin wall behind the pin wall was actually straight on the stand, not loosely hanging over it. It was a map of the city, she recognized the names of several districts that were written onto where they were. Crosses marked sites where possibly something happened, always accompanied with a column on some murder. Strings were connecting the needles and wrapped around a smaller circle, within the circle of what probably were different cases, that was simply marked 'possible residency', at the inner city residential area.

"* What - are you crazy?" Their returning guest host, panicked over what he saw, quickly closed and locked the door, peeked through the blinds of his window, and after being relieved over what he was afraid of possibly seeing, came closer to them. "* Don't just touch my stuff!", he told Papyrus.

Undyne couldn't help but asking though. Once it had been seen, she couldn't just make it so she hadn't. "* So what is that?"

This time, it was the official that was running his hand across his face, before slowly making back for his desk. "* Ugh, if I tell you, do you promise to keep your mouths shut about this?" They both nodded. "* Okay, listen. It's a case, okay? I'm not supposed to be investigating it. A serial killer." That explained the murder columns. "* His name is Revenant Jack. A copycat. He's been around for decades, but it was only eight years ago, when he came to this city. He has this name, because he kills prostitutes, surgically removes their organs with a precision that shouldn't be possible for a layman, and leaves messages calling himself 'Jack the Ripper'."

"* And a policeman investigating a case is a bad thing because...?"

He shuffled forward, and tilted his head down in Undyne's direction. "* Because, young lady this case has passed the deadline, the evidence disappeared from the evidence room, the chief dropped the case and it was declared unsolved. We're supposed to move on and work on other cases. But I personally can't really drop it in my mind, and just because we stop investigating it doesn't stop Jack from killing. It's still going on. This one..." He pointed at one of the columns, before rolling the mock pin wall back down. "* ...was just a few days ago. Every other week, someone dies - the same kind of people - it's always a human hooker - same cause of death - notes signed by the same name."

I've got to say, maybe there is more hope for humanity than she thinks, if even back then - before the Blue Blitz was a thing, there were humans with that curiosity and drive to take action that made them do things the chain of command doesn't foresee them doing.

"IT WAS A PLEASURE AND THANKS A LOT FOR TAKING THE TIME." Papyrus shook the man's hand with enthusiasm.

"* Before I risk getting caught talking about him any longer though, I'd like to conclude our little meeting. I hope it was informative enough. This is in case you really pursue that path and need any help or advice." He handed them two calling cards with his name, phone number and an e-mail address, before the two were escorted back outside the building. The streak of sunlight was ending, and the sky was cloudy. At least over here it was.

"* So, you still sure about this?"

"ALL THE MORE! I WILL BRING DILIGENCE AND HARD WORK TO THIS FORCE, AND PEOPLE LIKE THIS JACK WILL HAVE NO CHANCE!" No progress made on that front, huh? Well, they nonetheless had to get to calling Alphys to find out which stations to go for to catch up with them. While they trailed back to the station - with Papyrus occasionally stopping a human to ask for the way - she wondered how the others were doing.

* * *

With Undyne and Papyrus being given a chance to get an idea of what their first preference was, Alphys set out to lead the rest back to the station. But sheesh, that was close. Good thing the taller skeleton had this sudden craving. That guy before really looked like he was going to kick them all out a second before he saw those baked goods. Any free second she had, she used to text Sans. If things got precarious and she started stuttering again, she needed someone to have her back. And ever since they had gotten to the city, Gerson had been looking more and more sinister. There was something on his mind, but if he didn't just blurt it out, there was probably a reason why he didn't.

Most of them were waiting on their travel with the suiting reservation that came with not knowing what was awaiting them, but soon enough, they got there. The campus was still in the city, just not in the middle of it. Tall, grey-ed out buildings were towering above a barely-up-kept square. Masses of young people, a significant amount of them Orcs, were wordlessly moving past one another. The sight of the latter made Gerson seem even more tense than before, so they saw to it that they kept their distance and headed for one of the wider buildings that Alphys was leading them into. A bit away to the side, the doctor didn't want them to get near it, there were three humans with flashy scarves, hair dyed in bright neon colours and all three of them wearing glasses with black plastic casings, running a stand with some pamphlets and a big 'JACLYN' sign below. A clout of tobacco smoke was covering the entire width of the entrances, and only once inside, did things look a lot more clean. There were staircases to the far left and right end, and in-between, a corridor in the middle that led further into the building, as well as the crowded entrance doors of lecture halls.

"* We can't have a look around the place, not yet. We're just in time for this." Alphys led them to one of the crowds that were converging around the double doors. Once they got closer, they were greeted from all sides by complete strangers of several kinds, shaking hands of with some of them, introducing themselves, asking them questions about the Underground.

This was going more smoothly than Alphys was afraid it would, until a - slightly smaller - Orc came up to her to shake her hand. Gerson turned around, raised his hat and pressed the top of his stick into the chubby young man's chest. "* You get your hands off her, you hideous animal!"

The stranger raised his hands and backed off. "* I just wanted to say hello! Besides, hideous animal's sweet, coming from Mr. Safari Turtle."

Alphys and Sans were about to pull him away from the backing-off Orc, but he stopped his sudden outburst by himself. "* Wait...something's different about you..." He didn't have this empty look that the others had, his skin was brighter than that of all the other Orcs, his tusks were smaller and so was he. "* You're not really an Orc, are you?" His eyes narrowed, and despite this realization, he was still meeting that person with a healthy degree of distrust.

"* Yes I am! I'm just half human." This did make the turtle back off from him. Gerson still declared his distrust, but then left him alone. For a moment, she thought he was shooed away, but he came right back to her to shake her hand. "* Sorry about the trouble. I'm Mesut. I'm a big fan of you guys. So, came to the surface a little more than a week ago, now you're already preparing to study? And all in the sciences?" He was asking that, because the class they were headed to was preparatory classes for maths. Probably not something for Bratty and Catty, but the point of all this was mostly that they got an idea what it was like. He wouldn't let her go unless he could take a picture of her. There were so many of her at this point, what harm was one more going to do? An attempted smile and a snap later, everyone was headed into the concrete walls of a lecture hall. The Monsters stayed together and sat down as a little row. Far down, past the dozens of rows of chairs and extendable desks stood a man that Alphys could tell from pictures she had seen to be an Elf.

Once everyone was seated and the noise from the talking and the stepping of shoes on wooden stairs had seized, the lecturer opened up his class. "* Before we start, I would like to take the time to condemn the recent remarks by Dan Victor..." He started going on a tirade on how immoral those 'remarks' were, that went on for quite a bit, and even involved asking a student what their opinion of it was, followed by desperate attempts of that student at stuttering out some of the rhetoric Alphys had been shown and warned about on a certain place on the internet - and all of that without a single mention or citation of what those 'remarks' actually were.

Sans, who was sitting to Alphys' right, with her old friends on her left, started whispering. "* what's going on? i thought this was math prep."

Mesut, who must have consciously picked a seat right in front of them, turned around and held on to Alpyhs' desk to look up. "* They always do that at the beginning of their lectures. At least...certain ones."

She was starting to see the patterns and couldn't help but grin. "* You mean Elves?"

The half-Orc raised his hand and drew his hand from one side of his face to the other, mimicking that of a monk from an old sci-fi movie. "* I said nothing. Nothing at all." The lecturer did eventually come around actually get into mathematics, but the material he was refreshing was basic stuff that, while all those humans seemed to need calculators and paper for it, Alphys could just easily calculate in her head within a second. Then again, she shouldn't have been surprised. This was supposed to be basic stuff that was taught so people could catch up if they had to learn this from scratch. She eventually only half-way followed what was going on, and started surfing again. She went to a place she had just thought of, to ask if this thing at the beginning of classes was normal, when she noticed someone else had already posted something that caught her attention. "* Go to math prep - thinking it's a normal day - suddenly Monsters - look who's here!", it read, along with a picture of Alphys. The red tile walls, the stairs to the left, the crowd, the small part of the lecture hall door that you could see over the heads and shoulders of people in front of it, the bag she was carrying, it was the picture that hat just been taken of her a few minutes ago. Mesut's picture.

She angrily pinched the Orc's back, who turned around to see her phone with his post at the front. He just shrugged and turned back around. He knew damn well what he did. Then again, no-one who didn't browse that place would know, so it was probably just fun having a little secret going on within a large club of anonymous people - on top of a different one for today. After that, the lecture went on, the way Alphys had hoped from the beginning. Calm and uneventful. When it was getting time to finish up and the Elf at the bottom announced what topic they would cover next, her old friends yawned and leaned forward. "* Ugh, this was so boring! Humans do this every day?" Without even indulging in what Bratty was saying, Alphys took a look at everyone's notes. The result of Bratty and Catty trying to copy the equations that the lecturer had written on the board during the course, were an incoherent mess where in places, even the characters were gotten wrong. Bringing them up to speed was going to be pretty hard, at least if they did decide to live up here and go for something scientific. The librarian, Sam and old man Gerson's attempts were much more readable and actually made sense. Sans hadn't done anything throughout the lecture, he had just been leaning back from start to finish, but she did hear him whisper the solution to every problem before she even got to it herself. And it was probably directed at her, too.

During the later part of the lecture, Alphys had panicked when her phone rang. After suppressing it, she was lucky enough to text back at her Captain before she called again. In a written conversation, she could give her directions on where to go to meet up, and made sure to highlight that 'staying put' in the end meant of course to get off the train first. There was something else she probably had more reason to worry about. The Half-Orc was still walking alongside them. "* U-u-D-don't you have more stuff to do?"

He shook his head. "* Nope, I can go home for all it's worth, but okay, I can imagine you wouldn't be comfortable with me around." She was about to stop him, but before she knew, he had vanished as quickly as he had showed up. Welp, there went their guide for the day. At least he wouldn't cause a major fallout with Undyne.

"SO THIS IS WHERE HUMANS PREPARE THEMSELVES FOR THEIR LIVES." Papyrus was more confident to follow them back than Undyne was. That was, until they were actually on the campus, and he saw the brittle posters on the walls, the white, broken bricks with moss growing in between them and the constantly revived cloud at the entrances. "DOESN'T BODE WELL FOR THEIR LIVES THEN. VERY WELL, WE WILL HAVE TO MAKE DO."

Alphys just faced the fact that she had to navigate on her own. Which wasn't really hard. For a start, she was lucky that all the facilities seemed to be here. For the most part at least. She led them back to the lecture hall, for the two that hadn't seen it, found her way to the cafeteria, where the street Monsters were dragging at her hand to make her stop. "* Please, just a bit! That other thing can wait!" It couldn't, but even with Undyne's help, they only settled for a few pre-made sandwiches to go with. She was looking for something specific. Someone that could give them some answers she hadn't had the opportunity to look for. It was one more building away. The counseling offices. Unfortunately, the officials there only worked for one or two hours a day - and that was only on week days - and by the time they arrived, it was already too late. They were closed. She was going to have to take time out of the next day to get there in time. "* Ya see. This was like, so dumb. Let's go have something real. " Alphys didn't like it, but Catty was right. Some of them - including herself - hadn't had breakfast yet. The cafeteria only had a very narrow assortment to offer, and on top of that... "* Where's the Tequila?"

"* Yeah, and the shots." Were those two serious? Undyne and the guys were just taking what this place had, but her old friends were still stuck in teenage magazine-land. "* What is a college without shots?" Their mere appearances was already drawing looks, but whatever attention they didn't have, they were surely getting now.

"* We wanna get wasted!" They both said in sync with a melodious end to it.

A young man that was waiting in line in front of them turned around that last bit. He had an average human height, was wearing shirt and trousers with a little bag swung around one of his shoulders, had grey-ish different-looking skin, an extra flat nose, short black hair, yellow irises and vertical slits for pupils. And she saw some corner teeth that were pretty big for a human when he opened his mouth. "* Hey there. I think we haven't been introduced yet." He held Bratty's hand with his own in a not very formal way. "* My name's Paruj. And what's the charming lady's name?" The flustered crocodile turned to Catty to join in for a simultaneous 'woo'. Alphys had brought more than enough money to buy for everyone. Not that the skeletons or Undyne didn't have any surface currency on them, but you never knew with something like what she was doing. Most of the tables were up the stairs. It was actually a lot more comfortable in here, than it appeared outside. The windows covered all the outside walls, the place was very busy considering the time, and someone had actually cleaned the tables that were empty. She had to get back to reminding herself why she was doing this though. At least the part that was the reason why she brought all those others along. That part wasn't going well, with the conspicuous alley-gator's spontaneous flirt silently sitting there and eating with the rest of them. Giving them a good impression. "* So, what brings you all here? I heard you Monsters are building a village. How is that coming along? Think you will be done in a year or two?"

A year? Two? That was cute. So cute, Undyne burst out in laughter and gave him a pat on the back that was so strong, it pressed him against the table and made him wince in pain. "* More like one or two weeks!"

Maybe under physical pain, he was in less of a good mood. "* S-So, uh, what is it like? They look busy." Alphys pointed to people on other tables. Less than half the people sitting at the surrounding tables were actually eating or talking. The rest had piles of papers, books, calculators and small measuring devices laid out and were working. Those were the ones she was pointing to.

"* Well yes, that's what studying is about."

Not so fast. "* And how much time in the week do you spend working?"

He pressed himself against the back of his chair to relax again. "* Pretty much all of it?" Finally, it got the reaction she was hoping for. The two street Monsters pulled together in shock.

"* That boring stuff?", they asked in sync.

"* And not even all the degrees are in anyway useful. A lot of the arts are basically like having no degree at all."

They pulled together even more. "* Oh no!"

"* So if you try to dodge hard work by studying what you're interested in, that's often like not studying at all. Minus all the time and money you spent on it."

 **"* Oh no!"**

Once the librarian was done sipping from his teacup, he leaned forward and chimed in. "* I actually did not expect anything else."

Gerson lost his patience as well. "* You should all be happy it's like that. I still know when I was last up here..."

"* There we go." Undyne was bored already.

"* ...you're all so lucky, look at all these folks. In my day, the professors maybe had one book per course, and the lecture was just him reading from it. Everyone else was lucky if they could even read!"

Alphys knew that this was probably the best timing, the cue couldn't have been more convenient either, but she was missing the window and that third time wasn't going to happen on it's own, so she just did it herself. "* Oh no!"

"* OH YES!" Mettaton's blocky form rolled along from around the corner. There must have been an elevator somewhere, and of course Burgerpants was filming him along the way. "* GREETINGS, BEAUTIES! WHAT A NICE DAY ON THE SURFACE'S SUPREME HAVEN OF HIGHER EDUCATION." Sure, this was getting everyone to look, but it was Alphys' old friends that were really squealing with either joy or shock. "* I NOW GIVE YOU OUR CORRESPONDENT ON THE GROUND - HEAD OF THE ROYAL RESEARCH TEAM - DOCTOR ALPHYS!"

Oh god, so much attention. The many Monsters that were going to see this. She carefully lifted a hand to great them. "* H-h-h-hello?"

He picked up right where she was leaving him and rolled around her to get a shot of his and her front side. "* NOW NOW NOW, NOT SO SHY, DARLING, I'M SURE WITH ALL YOU HAVING BEEN HERE FOR SO LONG, YOU HAVE A LOT TO TELL MY WONDERFUL AUDIENCE ABOUT WHAT YOU SAW!"

The two street Monsters were just holding on to each other at this point. They were too fired up to have much of a sense of what exactly they were supposed to be feeling or thinking. "* It's bad!"

"* Really bad!"

"* Super bad!"

"* It's not like how they made it look like!"

"* Not at all!"

"* OH MY, IT WOULD APPEAR THAT OUR INVESTIGATIVE VISIT HAS TAKEN A DRAMATIC TURN!" The purple pterodactyl that sometimes helped him with mobile sets, rushed up the stairs and behind the camera, to set up a little show light and turned it red. "* IT SEEMS NEWS OF ATROCITIES ARE ON THE VERGE OF COMING IN! BRING ALL YOUR CHILDREN TO BED EARLY!" He held the microphone closer to Bratty to speak into. "* NO HESITATION, GIVE US ALL THE GORY DETAILS - MTT INC does not take responsibility for any psychological damage caused by any content presented.", he whispered into the microphone before bringing it back to his aghast interviewee.

"* They like, make you work all day, every day of the week."

The robot withdrew for a moment. "* OH MY, THIS SURE DOESN'T SOUND FAMILIAR. GOOD THING THE COMFORTABLE BUSINESSES OF THE UNDERGROUND DON'T MISTREAT THEIR WORKFORCE LIKE THAT! NOW, ON A SCALE OF ONE TO TEN, HOW WOULD YOU RATE IT?"

"* One out of ten."

"* Zero out of ten."

"* Bratty..."

"* I'm sorry. Zero out of ten."

"* Hashtag WorstPossibleDecision."

"* OH MY GOODNESS. WHAT HORRIFYING REVELATIONS WE HEAR HERE! ANY ADDENDA FOR THE HEAD OF RESEARCH TO COMPLETE THESE FINDINGS?"

Okay, she just had to keep herself together. Undyne was here after all. "* Y-yes. Hello...When Asgore said living on the surface means hard work, he wasn't kidding?" The way she said it at the end made it sound more like a question, but otherwise it was probably okay.

"* EXTRAORDINARY POINT! OUR MAJESTY WAS WELL-INFORMED INDEED! GOOD TO HAVE A SAPIENT KING AND A CURIOUS RESEARCHER TO DISCOVER STUMBLING BLOCKS LIKE THIS, BEFORE WE COME ACROSS THEM." As if on command, he ran his hand around to check his watch. "* OH MY, WE ARE ALL OUT OF TIME FOR THIS NEWS SEGMENT. WE CONTINUE COVERAGE OF CONSTRUCTION AFTER THE BREAK."

"* Aaand we're done.", the cat behind the camera announced.

"* PERFECT. DRAMA, SUSPENSE, UNEXPECTED TWISTS, THIS IS EXACTLY THE MATERIAL TO PUT BETWEEN VILLAGE AND THEATRE." Theatre? She was going to have to ask him about that.

Now that at least the camera was off, the street Monsters could simmer down a bit as well and remind themselves of who this was. "* Mettaton!"

"* Mettaton!"

"* Oh my god, I was so out there just now but this is really happening."

"* Can you give me an autograph?"

"* We're your biggest fans!"

"* I wanna marry you!"

"* We both wanna!"

In his typical mock-comforting fashion, he spun around to stand behind Bratty and pat her on the shoulder, before heading back to the camera. "* MY, MY, GENTLEBEAUTIES, WANT TO MARRY ME? WHO DOESN'T WANT TO MARRY ME? I WOULD MARRY MYSELF IF I COULD! NOW COME ALONG, CHOP CHOP, BURGERPANTS. WE STILL HAVE TONS OF MATERIAL TO SHOOT AT THE THEATRE."

The feline only begrudgingly followed. "* It'd be nice if you stopped calling me that."

"* NUH UH UH, BURGERPANTS! REMEMBER WHAT I SAID ABOUT BRAND RECOGNITION! YOU CAN'T AFFORD TO LOSE SUCH AN ICONIC NAME!" After that, all three of them were already gone. Once he was gone, they finished up with what they had, said their goodbyes with the student that had granted them company and would now soon be seen throughout the Underground, probably not to his knowledge, and made for home.

Everyone was silent on the way home. Almost everyone. The skeletons weren't. "* so how was your visit at the ecpd? you got any idea if you like that?"

"OH BOY, DO I?"

"* Please don't." Undyne didn't seem to like the prospects of this at all. She had long shared that with Alphys at all. She definitely didn't want him forced into situations where he had to change from where he was. The doctor on the other hand thought that wasn't such a bad idea. If Papyrus was like a safe haven for her, what was bad if he could be at her side, whenever things got tough?

"THEY'RE WORKING IN STRICT WORK AND ON-CALL SCHEDULES, THEY PUT EFFORT INTO WHAT THEY WORK ON! THEY HAVE STRICTLY REGULATED PROCEDURES AND IT'S ALL SO FAMILIAR SOMEHOW. IT'S LIKE THE JOB I WAS BORN FOR!"

"* You keep saying that, Papyrus!", burst out of their Captain. "* You heard what he said about Chief K'Tenga. How can you trust anyone in there?"

"MAYBE HE DIDN'T KNOW ANY BETTER."

Undyne was just left sighing and covering her face. "* ya've gotta listen to her, man. there's something weird going on with these guys."

"IF THERE IS SOMETHING BAD GOING ON, THEN WHO SAYS WE TWO CAN'T FIX IT? TOGETHER!" He ran an arm around his marine friend's shoulder and pulled her closer. "IMAGINE IT, UNDYNE! US TWO TOGETHER IN THE FORCE! MAYBE EVEN...AS PARTNERS?"

After that, she couldn't help but go with the mood. She chuckled and returned his gesture. "* Sure. Sky's the limit."

"MAGNIFICENT! THEN WE MOVE ON..." He threw a look out of the window, as the train left the city and entered the stretches between fields of crops under the partly clouded summer sun. "...TO A BETTER FUTURE!" She started to get an idea what exactly it is that Undyne saw in him. Why he was where she sometimes used to retreat to. She had always been someone to see the situation as grimly as it was. That thing he had that made him the way he was, always seeing the positive and never losing hope, even in the face of being trapped down here with little to no chance of ever escaping. In part, it probably was naivete. But to keep it up through all that Monsterkind had been through, the way that he did, it took something else. His constant plays of 'the great papyrus' how self-absorbed he was. This wasn't just an act. It was exactly the way he was. Confidence. That was what he had - no - what he was. Maybe he was where Undyne went to refuel her own to begin with.

* * *

"* OH MY, WE ARE ALL OUT OF TIME FOR THIS NEWS SEGMENT. WE CONTINUE COVERAGE OF CONSTRUCTION AFTER THE BREAK." After that, the screen faded into an obscure image of what Asgore could only deduce was what some Monsters imagined the sky to look like in the day, with three Aarons fading into the picture. "* Hey you!" Everything said by an overenthusiastic yet faux-masculine sounding voice was accompanied by letters spelling out every word and being animated in random ways. "* Are you sick of all those Aarons near the water stealing your thunder? Are you sick of going to the gym, yet the gains just never start coming? Stop right now!" The last three words came exploding over the footage of overtaxed felines attempting to bench-press much too heavy weights. What was thrown into the picture and stopped in the middle was a flashy plastic wrapping of a lengthy object. "* Try brand-original EMM TEE TEE power bars! These will give you the magic growth impulse you've always needed for the biggest and best guns!" The next image was a before-and-after of two cats, visibly at least a decade apart in age, and one of them was a bodybuilder while the other was a meekly teenager. This was getting silly enough, so he turned off the television he had rolled out here for that precise purpose.

"* Is this really going to work?", William asked.

"* What the robot sells is the entertainment. His products are expensive and have little effect. They're just how he makes the money."

"* No, of course I don't mean the power bars. This whole setup of yours." Seeing as they both knew from the start, that he didn't mean the advertisement after it, they both laughed.

"* It isn't supposed to scare them off. Only those who think that moving to the surface means free, sophisticated housing. I can't afford people who aren't going to use those first few years to prepare to earn all the money we need to maintain this village and more than that, taking up expensive housing." He wouldn't resort to Elven measures if he didn't have to, but three to five years of paying for all their expenses with little to no income in return was going to put them in a tight schedule. It was probably better to bring this back to where it came from and undo all the cables. Before they were done, the group that had just been on TV, was trotting back through the stone frames that led into and through his house. When they passed him, he gave a nod to Alphys and stopped his old friend in his tracks. "* So you return, trusty hammer. What do you make of it?"

Gerson walked a circle to lean against the wall. "* Been doing my best holding back with all these young ones. I've got to say, Fluffybuns, there's Orcs up there, we've been free for nearly two weeks and they're still alive. That girl's really done a job on you, hasn't she?"

William was confused. "* Girl?"

"* He means Toriel."

Now with something to support him, the old veteran wove his stick in the air. "* When I've already been smashing scoundrel skulls, she wasn't even born yet! Fast forward one and a half centuries, she's a grown woman and married to this cavalier right there! Made him way too soft. Things already look bad. I dread to think how bad they really are. If it were up to me, we'd be chopping off the heads of those ugly Ogers right now."

In spite of having a much better idea of 'how bad it was', William was yet shocked to hear this. It was probably the best, to just play this off. "* I think such a quick solution wouldn't work."

"* Fancy-shmancy politics. The best way to persuade someone like that to go is only ever one of two things. The sharp end of a blade, or the blunt side of a hammer!"

"* Or the barrel of a gun?" It appeared, that William started to pick up Gerson's pace after all.

* * *

Even though she hadn't worked out at all until now, Undyne still looked and sounded tired when they came back from bringing the last one back home. They both knew Asgore well enough to know that Gerson may pretend to be formal with others, but was actually a close friend of his, so they could count on him looking out for the old turtle. "* This sure was one big waste of time!", she sighed.

"* Uh...maybe not as much as you think." Alphys looked left and right. Checked for both exits, and then quickly rushed from one to the other to dial the locks to keep them shot if someone tried to come here from outside. "* If I tell you a secret, can you keep it between us?"

"* Sure..."

"* Remember how I told you I had spoken to Mettaton?"

"* Yeah?"

"* And how I told you he was busy?"

"* Yes?"

"* I lied. He wasn't busy."

"* Go on..."

"* Didn't you think it was strange that he happened to be there to show up, just when Bratty and Catty were getting their dream castle crashed?"

"* Occurred to me, yes?"

"* Don't you think it's a bit much of a coincidence?"

"* I thought that for a while, yes."

"* Well it wasn't. It was no coincidence. See this?" She pulled out a small device that had been attached to the inside of one of her pockets. "* A bug. He can hear anything it hears. He was there because he was tailing us."

"* You mean you had this on you the whole time?"

"* Yep."

"* Then stop listening to us you weirdo!" Undyne grabbed the device, threw it on the ground and stomped on it. This was valuable - well not really valuable, she could make a new one, but still.

"* Undyne, why?"

"* I didn't know how to turn it off."

"* Then, you almost got me with my choices. An old man who wasn't going to like things being so stressful. You know, pacing from place to place and all that. A clumsy dragon who probably didn't really want to be up there so badly anyway. And the girls, because that kind of work on a regular basis was way, way off from anything they could relate to. I picked them all because I knew there's something about it that they wouldn't like."

"* And the librarian?"

Alphys shrugged. "* No particular reason. He was there, I thought he seemed alright to check it out, so I took him along."


	30. Till the fish come home

.

A Doctor's Duty

Chapter 19

Till the fish come home

* * *

"Monster metabolisms. Monsters may not be made of mass for the most part, but we do have magical structures within our body that interact with other substances like some proteins do. We have to. If we had nothing in our bodies that can emulate enzymes, we wouldn't be able to digest any food, and there are countless other reasons for having them. Such as to break down commonly ingested poisons that affect us just like they affect humans. Maybe to a varying, lesser degree, but they still do. Including but not limited to, before all else, alcohol. A neurotoxin generated at first by fermenting fruits. Unfortunately, humans and Monsters from ancient times on thought it's a good idea to put it in a lot of what they drink and then drink endless amounts of it. They're all addicted - in fact they're so addicted, if you prohibit drinking it, they would rather risk prison than not to drink it. And over the millennia, they drank such stupidly enormous amounts of it, that so many of them died from sheer alcohol poisoning, that at least western humans and Monsters evolved to obtain a higher physical tolerance to it. They break it down faster, because those potential ancestors who didn't, had killed themselves just by drinking too much. Those yellow humans from the east - you know, like the one that freed us - they were clever enough not to do that. But that also means they don't have that tolerance."

* * *

Things slowed down a bit. Papyrus headed out to pursue becoming the first Monster with a driver's license, Alphys took her time to enlist more and different Monsters to apply than she had taken for their little PR stunt and Sans relaxed. Asgore's self-appointed task of overseeing the constructions didn't go as uninterrupted as he had hoped though. He had an issue with the former farmers to resolve, but that was nothing a king of several centuries couldn't find a solution to. The days passed and contrary to her hopes, Undyne would find herself waking up on her day of reckoning. The day of the rematch she so eagerly demanded one week ago. Sans was called to the door pretty early, only to find a chill waterman look down when he opened the door. Gee, he was impressed. If the guy was here, must have gotten up early enough to walk all the way to New Home, only to take the southern lifts there into Hotland, straight past Undyne's late house.

"* you ready for your big day?"

Krushe shrugged a bit back upon hearing this, and ruffled his snowy hair while trying to laugh off his embarrassment. "* Yeah, about that. If this is happening, I'm going to need a lift. Most phones can't dial to the surface. I thought I'd ask you if..."

"* sure. here ya go." There was no way he was gonna let trivial stuff like this get in the way. It wasn't the first time he came by for help anyway. Sure enough, the Tiderider called his sporty friends and soon, the two of them left Papyrus to study for driving school.

And off in Hotland, the very moment the lab door slid open, humble Krushe was gone right again. He stood proud and grinned at the soon not-so-much yawning Undyne. "* Ready to get humiliated?"

This surprised her enough to break her resolve. She stumbled back and froze. "* Wha - you? Sans? You didn't forget about it?" Not if Sans could do anything about that. "* Sans! What are you even doing here?"

"* he needed someone to help call for a lift." The cheeky skeleton wove his phone around in his hand.

They were really getting her fired up. Within the span of three seconds, she went from reaching for Krushe's neck, to stomping around on the ground to running her hands across her face until she resigned from her mute fit of rage. "* Okay, okay.", she grunted. "* I'm getting the swimming stuff." She headed back inside and up the moving staircase. Without a word, Sans and Krushe came to an agreement to take her leaving the door open like that as an invitation to come in.

"* Nice place!"

A meekly lizard cowered behind the massive screen. "* Hehe, thank you...I guess." She then blushed and just snuck off after Undyne.

When Sans turned back to the waterman, he seemed pretty awkward and consciously or not, he was stepping back outside. "* you excited?"

"* You bet. I'm actually really honored that she's doing this."

"* honored? you sure don't sound the part whenever she's around."

"* Yes, that sort of started off as a joke, but I just can't get myself to stop around her."

"* prolly better that way. it's a lot more fun." His laughter did sound as embarrassed about the whole thing, but Sans was intent on seeing this through as far as it would go.

Krushe already had what little he needed in a little bag hanging down his shoulder and wasn't wearing more than shirt and shorts as it was. Alphys on the other hand was probably going overboard with the stuff she was packing for Undyne. Sans made some calls to see who would wanna watch this. Undyne's enthusiasm, or more like her lack thereof gave him the impression that she didn't see herself winning this, and how often did you see her get beaten nowadays. Come to think of it, quite a lot recently, but it was always something to enjoy. Asgore wanted to stay in the village, no matter what, but William offered to drive them. At least Toriel and Frisk were interested in seeing the rematch. In fact, Frisk even made some phone calls and got one of his new human friends to come over and watch this with his mom as well. Even Papyrus ditched his new occupation for this.

By the time everyone was gathered and slowly moving down the cliff, with workers hasting in both ways and forcing them to watch their step at all times, Krushe's human friends were already waiting at the foot of it. Soon enough, everyone was set to head back down to the beach. They all knew the destination this time after all. The other car did make sure to stay at the tail of the big minibus that William was still renting. The other little human's mother wasn't as talkative as Sans was worried she would be. Most talking on the trip was the little boy asking questions about what all this was about.

That seaside town was much more calm this time. There were more than enough parking spaces not to have to look for one, and there was no-one on the beach except for a few regular visitors in the distance. While they were still settling down, with Alphys setting up her extendable tent and the other group walking past them to use one of the public ones, Undyne stormed right up to said other group and once she reached her kinsman, pressed her index finger hard against his chest. "* Same stretch. No cheating, no anchors, no harpoons, no rotors, nothing!"

He just smiled and swiped her hand right down, which prompted sounds of surprise from both sides. And didn't back off, but moved even closer to her - really close - and pointed to himself with his thumb. "* No need to get your hopes up, babe. I'm gonna devastate you fair and square! No magic attacks needed!"

It was Undyne that found herself stepping backwards. For a few moments at least. She drew everyone's attention again when she stopped and dug her feet in. "* You know what? That's it, weirdo!" She paused to give the head-in-the-sky waterman a chance to face her. "* All bets are off. Hyaaaaah" With an intense scream that shocked everyone around and drew the looks of distant visitors, she grabbed her eye-patch and towards the end of her rallying cry, tore it right off. Almost everyone gasped in surprise at the sight of what lay below her eye-patch. Right there, covered by it all this time, where someone else like her would have another eye was...another eye. "* What do you say to this?", she shouted right to his face.

Krushe wasn't even fazed though. He nodded. "* I like it."

"* What?"

"* Now you can watch me speed ahead - in 3D!" Everyone gasped again. One, after the other in quick succession. Except the male Tiderider's friends, who instead circled the two to give their mate a row of high fives.

She herself soon turned around bristling with anger, paced to Alphys' already all-set-up tent and grabbed the bag she needed out of the anxious doctor's hands. Soon enough, both were back in front of the rest in their swimsuits. While William was laying out his suggestion as to how to go about it, leaving Alphys and one of Krushe's friends on the other side to wait for their respective contestant to reach them, before they could head back to the start. That grown human that always hung out with Asgore was about to be the only one to accompany them to the start when. "* Wait a minute!" She wouldn't have this. "* Am I supposed to trust in the human being impartial?", she grunted at the other fish.

Before this went any further, the skeletons gave each other a look and followed. "* you happy with us being there too?" This did suffice to her. She still got more and more shaky on the inside, the closer they got to the original starting point and she felt a bit dizzy, too. No, she couldn't let herself make excuses. The race hadn't even started yet.

"* Wish me luck!", she told the skeletons.

"YOU CAN DO THIS!"

"* i just wanna see where this goes." The smaller one was enjoying all this a little too much.

Nevertheless, she eventually stood where they had stood a week ago, side by side with her cocky competitor. "* Good luck, you're going to need it." She didn't look back at him. She knew things must have changed. She had trained every free minute for this. She had to have a chance. Especially after her last revelation. She must have shaken up this guy's resolve. Tearing off her eye-patch must have helped.

It hadn't helped. They were roughly at the same speed when running down the edge of the beach, but as soon as they had jumped in the water and were deep enough to swim, Krushe spread out all his fins, the ones on his cheeks, his arms, his chest, his legs - all of which moved in flawless sync, swung his arms through the water and slammed them onto the length of his body and in one swoop, launched himself way forward. He took this...whatever he had that made him so fast last time and went all out with it. Every burst of speed of his was trailed for a long time by a thin string of bubbles. She felt more and more dizzy, which didn't get better until she closed her left eye and even after that, no matter how hard she tried to pull after him, she was only half-way on the other side, when he was already streaming back, gliding through the water on each burst - not like a fish - smoother than a fish. She went through with it and kept going, no matter how little of her dignity she could keep like this. Alphys looked just as worried as she thought she would, when she came out of the water to meet her hand and she kept going all the way back, knowing what disgrace was awaiting her on the other side.

When she slowly ascended from the deep, Papyrus had a friable look on his skull. That of Sans was...something. In the corner, seated against the wall, sat an exhausted waterman, surrounded by human men in casual wear who seemed to have given him a towel to dry off his face.. Still heavily breathing, he beckoned her to come closer. "* Whew. Hadn't had a workout like this in a long time. You didn't go so straight without that patch of yours. Want another rematch?" She loved the thought, but seeing him do his best made it very clear to her. No matter how hard she tried, this guy was just way out of her league, even if she worked out for another week or so. For the time being - until she learned the stuff he could do at least, any more rematches were pointless. All she could do now was take the defeat with dignity and hope this would all be gotten over with.

"* Nah." She summoned a spear, only to bury it head-first in the sand. "* I know when I'm beat."

"* And the bet?"

She knew she couldn't worm her way out of this. Best just face things head-on. From here. "* Yeah, whatever, you get your date."

She expected him to leap for joy, or find some other way to rub it in her face, but he just sat there and laughed. "* I can't have that either way. Going to some place up here? They all ask for human money. I'm dead broke."

Her newfound hope was crushed at once, when all the guys exchanged looks and started picking out their wallets. No. Please not. This was her way out. "* You know what?" One of them started. "* There's no way we're missing out on that. Not after all this." Following his example they all picked out bunches of bills, gestured Krushe to open his hand and slammed all the bills on it in one more low-five for their winner.

After that, everyone packed their stuff and headed home right again. Alphys was as concerned about this as she was. But she knew as well as Undyne did, that she couldn't just bail on it, not after talking as big as she did to lead to this. At least they were in separate vehicles, so she and the doctor used the trip home to discuss ways of tricking this guy into not coming or finding other ways of bailing without really bailing. Unfortunately, once they all got out to head up the cliff, Sans was suddenly gone, and the next thing she knew, was him coming back down with a smug Krushe. "* What must I hear there, babe? Plotting to chicken out?"

She couldn't believe what was happening around her. She glared at Sans and bore her teeth. "* Sans..."

Of course, he just threw up his arms and pretended not to care. "* i'm just a man of honor."

"* No you're not, you grab every opportunity to slack off! You're the reason he got a ride, You want this date to happen, don't you?"

The skeleton put his hands back in his pockets. "* ya know what? i think you're on to something." There wasn't much hope in further trying to intimidate him.

"* And you!" She continued, facing Krushe. "* I shouldn't have to date you if you don't want to!"

He threw up his hands the same way Sans did and put on the same 'I'm totally okay with either' act. "* You don't have to, I understand. I relieve you of that bet." He did? "* It's like I said last week. One date with this handsome fellow and what you two have got going goes down the drain."

Okay, now he was just asking for it. She stormed right forward and got all up in his space the way he did before the race "* Listen up, you sleazy piece of - I'm going, okay? I'm not backing out! You'll get your date and it'll be the best date you ever had, and me and Alphys will be together anyway! You hear me?" He did have some really big teeth with that smiling mouth of his. It was only at moments like this, where she was made aware that she was looking up to him. Something that was always between them, was that he was indeed a bit taller than her.

"* All right, if you insist. Tomorrow sound good?" He stepped aside to look over her shoulder down to his friends that were still watching. "* Tomorrow evening?" They gave him a thumbs up. "* So? What about it?"

Why was she kidding herself? The point of no return was crossed a week ago. She offered her hand for a handshake, and pressed together his hand as strong as she could, in hopes of getting a flinch out of him. "* You bet! Tomorrow evening it is!"

This time, Undyne got to sleep as long as she liked. No training, no-one waking her up early in the morning. She even skipped out on her regular practise. No way this clown was going to make her obsess over the evening all day. She stayed in the lab for some time, she went to her workout, where she started her target practise again. It really went a lot better with a new eye-patch. It probably would go better with both eyes if she got used to both. She missed a lot more often, and occasionally, she caught herself picturing his image where the dummy or targeted rock formation stood. She eventually figured that there wasn't much use at this point. It was probably time to get ready anyway. So through the constant pleas of Alphys to try and find some other way around this, she put on all her evening clothes. Her white shirt, her black leather jacket, she put on her deep red wig and straightened out all her clothes.

When Krushe showed up, he knocked from the other side and was dressed formally, with black-and-white suit and tie. "* No need for an undertaker." He didn't answer. He just smiled. But something was different regardless. It wasn't this cocky grin he always used to boast the size of his jaws. His smile seemed more genuine and for once, calm and relax and so did the man overall.

"* Are you ready?"

God, what had happened to him? "* Yeah, whatever, let's just get this over with."

Once the door closed and the two set off to leave the Underground, from his back he pulled forth a bouquet of bluebells. "* They grow not far from where I live. Do you like them?" What in the world had gotten into him? This was - he was so...wimpy. No, he had already proven that that wasn't it. Cheesy? Maybe a bit, but Alphys was cheesy too - oh god, she was already comparing him to Alphys. She had better change the subject before this went any further.

"* So uh - "

"* Krushe's the name." Some nerve, implying she had forgotten his name.

"* Krushe what's with the sweet act all of a sudden?"

He laughed and for a moment, he looked like the brash guy she knew him from the only two times she had met him. "* Hey, you only agreed to one date. Don't blame me for making it count." Cheeky son of a dog. She was onto him, whatever it was that he was up to. She just had to figure out what that was. "* I just think there might be something between us. Something real."

Undyne's eyes narrowed down in disbelief. "* Really? Really? You do?"

"* Care to find out?" She had to move a few steps to the side to dodge his attempt to wrap his arm around her shoulder. When she did, he couldn't help but laugh. "* Still trying so hard, aren't you?" 'Trying', this guy's old overconfidence shtick was either back, or it was never gone and this was just him pretending.

Asgore raised his cup to greet them when they came by. "* Howdy, you two. Where are you headed this time?" Before she could react and stop him, Krushe grabbed her hand and announced in front of the king and all the passing-by workers, all of which could hear his deep but clear voice. "* We're going out on a date!" Oh god, this was so humiliating, but his grip was too strong to just wrestle out of without causing more of a scene and she wasn't in much of a position to object to that either.

The king was understandably confused. "* Really? I had thought..."

She was about to object anyway, when Krushe raised a finger and held it right in front of her mouth. "* Watch what you're saying. Are we or are we not going out on a date?" She looked back at him before rolling her eyes. Some of the Builvers, working so long and hard, their clothes were dirty beyond recognition from never having had an opportunity to change or wash them and who had come here from all corners of the Underground, were forced to stop and walk careful circles around them when carrying and carting their materials. He was blurting this out in front of all these people. Everyone was going to know, wherever she went, at least down there. In every damn place that wasn't on the surface and probably in some places on the surface too, she was going to have to fear people thinking that she dated this guy. And in a way, they were going to be right. This was going to be over at some point, but he wasn't going to let her forget about it.

She wanted to do something, but all the way up until right now, she only got carried away and made everything worse, every time she tried to resist and protest. She dropped her shoulders, gave up standing against this, sighed and admitted it. "* Yes. Yes we are going out on a date."

Asgore was surprised, but not as surprised as Undyne had hoped him to be. "* Hm, hm, it's good to see you moving on in your life. Especially that fast."

"* Hey!" She didn't believe what she was hearing. "* What's that supposed to mean? Hey! I want an answer." Asgore turned back to watch the construction, kept quiet and seeing as this wasn't going anywhere with how he wouldn't respond, Undyne gave in to Krushe's attempts at dragging her down the path first by the wrist, then the hand. He only let go, when they arrived at the streets at the foot of it. And not out of his own impulse either. "* It's okay, you got your point across, you can let go now." The ride to the city was a pretty silent one, at least between the two of them. She did eavesdrop on some humans talking about them between two stops. Once they exited the train, they would be all on their own. If she then just stole his money and ran - okay if that wasn't cowardly and pathetic then what was? What was probably more worth considering was their destination. He was leading her. Krushe, who to her knowledge had only ever been twice to the surface seemed to know where to go. Where were they even going? Or more importantly, how did he know where to go? Sans. He must have given him access to the internet or in some other way helped him. Those humans giving him money, Asgore not doing a thing about it, Sans helping by putting Krushe through to the surface, so many people were all plotting to get her on this date with him, even if it was only a measly try. She had to find ways to get back at each of them.

Krushe hadn't led her into the city, but a nearby town to the entrance of a wide and well-decorated restaurant. The panels of smoothed out cherry tree wood were adorned with paintings of open prairies and waterfalls in filigree wooden and gilded frames, their colour giving the interior lighting a red-ish air with the dim yellow light shining onto them. Humans were seated either in groups or couples around other tables and all absorbed by their own meals and comparably held-back conversations. "* Isn't this a bit much?"

He just led the way inside to one of the tables and pulled back one of the chairs for her. "* Far from it. I've still got some sightseeing in store if there's time after this." He prepared for all this in one day? More importantly - all on his own? She found it hard to believe, but for the time being, she humoured his antics. Moments after the two had settled down, a waiter came by to pass them the menu. "* Go for whatever you like." She would have went ahead and just ordered something, but the fancy names that everything had were in at least one completely different language and impossible to pronounce. At least to her own capacity. She eventually just asked the waiter if he could recommend her something warm and not too heavy, before sending him off with the offer for the two of them. From nowhere she could see, probably played by a radio, rung a jazzy tune played by a piano and a saxophone. "* So, Undyne. Captain of the Royal guard, right? So what does your day consist of?"

Was he doing this? He really was doing this. "* Not much to show for right now. No war to prepare for, and everyone who used to be it is twisting their thumbs and...you know."

"* That's sad to hear." No smirk, no snark, no nothing. She knew better, but he really sounded genuine. "* So let me rephrase it then, what does your day consist of lately?"

"* Training?"

"* Training? What kind of training?"

"* Combat training. Mostly target practise. You know, hitting targets with spears."

The waiters came back with water within less than a minute, but the food kept her waiting. Krushe leaned back in his chair and nodded to what she said. "* Combat? I've got to say, you improved a lot on your swimming." This guy - this guy knew, didn't he? He knew she had been working out preparing for their rematch non-stop and this was his cruel way of rubbing it in her face.

This weirdo had probably been watching her, but she kept her calm and didn't allow her thoughts to be visible. Better to turn this back on him. "* Thank you. But enough about me. What do you do with your time?"

He wasn't startled like she hoped he would be. "* Swimming. I have a house right at the coast of a big lake with a hole in the ceiling - not in the house, the cave. The lake flows off into rivers, but the hole keeps refilling it." He tilted forward a bit and slowly drew his hand across his face so as to paint a picture. "* A constant stream of new water, every day, all day and an always fresh body of water to swim in." This did sound pretty awesome - no, she couldn't let this work on her. This wasn't going well. It hadn't been going well for a long time. Nothing she did worked, she couldn't play him like a fiddle like she learned to by interrogating people. If anything, he was playing her. She looked over to the kitchen, where the cooks were absently doing their work, and found the waiter nowhere in sight. What was keeping him and their meals? Every second of silence had the risk of... "* You like what you hear? You could come over some time. I could show you." No need for that. It wasn't like she didn't faintly know what he was talking about. She could see that place, in the far distance, from the highest points of the upper plateaus of waterfall.

"* So what is it you do? You know - for..."

"* Mostly fishing. "

"* What, like rowing out on a boat with a fishing pole?" The thought was kinda funny considering who was saying this.

"* Pfft, of course not." He paused, grinned, baring his teeth and made a grasping motion with his hand. "* That hole the water comes in from. What do you think where the fish come from? Sometimes I just launch myself in the air and catch them mid-flight." The weirdest thing was that she could imagine him realistically doing this, after seeing what he could do herself. "* Now...I can't waste this opportunity. You've got to tell me some things about yourself. Word gets around about you, your life must be so exciting. Captain of the Royal Guard, friends with the only skeletons around, friends with the human that made all this possible - the Barrier! How was it removed? It must have happened when those vines were everywhere, but you were right there when it happened." The waiter finally came by to serve them. Krushe had only ordered something very small, she could understand if he hadn't had any human food before. She probably wasn't going to empty out her plate either. He continued between bits. "* Maybe it's a bit much at once. Let's start smaller. The human that freed us, how did you two meet?"

Of all the questions he could have come up with, he went for this one. She really didn't want to talk about that for several reasons. Maybe how she met Alphys, Asgore, how she became the captain but...maybe brutal honesty would get him to drop that. "* I tried to kill him."

There probably still would have been a few moments of silence, even if he wasn't busy eating. "* You didn't make it, did you?" She suspected even if he didn't know ahead of time, he was taking the hint. "* Or maybe you changed your mind?"

She quickly nodded and tried to get this put to rest. "* Yeah - yeah, that last one." For a moment, she believed she had dodged that topic.

"* And then? I mean he wasn't the only human to come down here, how did the barrier go away if he's still alive?"

Still with this? She shrugged. "* Heck if I know, humans are weird. The barrier was gone before I really knew what was up."

"* Hm, okay." Dead end, and because of how slow he was eating with this spoon and fork they were given, he was far from done by the time Undyne was. Was this going to be it? Awkward silence here, and then awkward silence later when they go sightseeing? No, not if she had any say in this. "* You know what?" She fixated the other fish and smashed her fist against the table. "* Screw this!"

And that was the last thing she could clearly remember.

* * *

She had declined when she was asked to come along by Sans. Alphys couldn't bear to see this. She spent the hours that followed Undyne's departure sitting in a corner of the lab, stuffing herself with ice cream and only stopping to get more of it. She didn't know how much time passed with this routine, but eventually, the lab doors slid open. This time, it wasn't a bunch of lost Temmies like last time, but - well it was Undyne, but she looked a way she didn't expect her to. She peeked down the railing to get a good look at her, but Undyne pointed right at her. "* No need to hide, I can see you!" Her open eye was twitching, her face was blushed and she wasn't walking straight when she made for the escalator. Alphys stayed in place, but when the fish lady arrived, she went straight past her, pressed the button that folded up the bed, and jumped right on it with her face buried in one of the pillows.

Hands-together and light-footed, Alphys snuck closer to it's side. "* ...U-uh..." She could hear Undyne's regular breathing, not sleep-breathing. Not that that really was a thing, it was more of a snoring most of the time. But she was clearly awake right now. "* S-so how d-did it go?" All she heard for a response was an upset-sounding, muffled groan.

"* Not very good."

Undyne didn't move an inch, but this time, it sounded more affirmative. "* Mhm."

She was already retreating to go lock the doors. "* Do y-you want me to l-leave you alone?"

"* Nh nh." That was a no. Which was good.

Alphys came back closer and sat on the bed beside her friend. "* Is it something he said?"

"* Nh nh." No.

If she was upset like this, it was probably better to limit it to whatever means of communication she was willing to bother with. Which meant talking on a strict yes-or-no basis. "* D-did s-something happen between you two?" She knew that Undyne knew what she meant, but to her relief, she declined. "* Uh, then..." Not many possibilities, so she had to guess what was likely. They were both fish, they were both very bitey. Probably looked very ferocious to most humans they came across. "* Did he start eating like a wild animal?" Undyne declined. "* Did you eat like a wild animal?" That was confirmed. Okay, that wasn't hard to guess, she tended to eat like a wild animal as it was. "* Is it t-that?" No, back to square one. "* Okay, please help me here."

Her captain finally turned around her head to face her. "* I botched it, okay? I talked big and didn't deliver!" She wasn't looking at Alphys. Well she was, but she wasn't really looking straight. And as Sans would put it, the smell of her breath was the smell of someone who couldn't hold her liquor.

"* So what d-did happen anyway?"

Her captain looked off to the side and started recalling. "* Well apparently..."

* * *

She fixated the other fish and smashed her fist against the table. "* Screw this!" Good, she caught his attention. "* I've had enough of your wimpy little dog and pony act! You wanna show me how tough you are? Human!" They were surrounded by humans, but the was shouting right at the waiter, who understood this as his cue to come closer. "* Bring me a mug of your stronger stuff!"

Finally, this guy was a bit unsettled. He looked after the disappearing staff member and then back at Undyne. "* What are you doing?"

"* You know! This is getting way too boring!" When the waiter brought a bottle of scotch and two new glasses, she filled hers and downed it in one go! It felt like it shot right to her head and she needed a second to catch herself, before bawling right at him. "* You've really got to learn how to keep someone entertained!" From an aisle further away, that she hadn't paid attention to until then, suddenly everyone turned to her and put down their menus. When they started cheering on what was happening here, she turned around to see that it was Krushe's human friends - and Sans! Did they follow them here? Or maybe they knew where they were going and were here all the time. "* You? Sans, you too?" He just shrugged, this irreverent lackey! "* I'll remember this! And you!" She turned back to point at Krushe still with her emptied out glass in her hand.

He was raising his hand to try and calm her down. "* Come on, put the bottle away." He tried and failed to take the bottle and place it outside of Undyne's range, because she reached right for it and tore it out of his hand.

He was still collected, but she was getting to him. She was finally getting to him. She could see it in his eyes. His expression changed completely, all the soft parts of it vanished and he reached for the bottle with one hand. "* This really isn't going to help, come on, let's continue this a normal way." In the background, the guys in Sans' aisle were giving each other fives.

* * *

"* S-so you started getting drunk, because it wasn't exciting enough?"

Recalling what happened really got her to calm down a bit. "* Yeah? He told me everything when we were coming home."

"* Wait...what if it was different?"

"* How so?" Alphys started speculating how it could have gone.

* * *

She fixated the other fish and smashed her fist against the table. "* Screw this!" Good, she caught his attention. She raised her voice, but not too much. "* This date is way too lame! You better bring on something interesting now!"

Krushe's eyelids dropped, but he wasn't the least bit startled. In fact, his cold demeanour made it seem like he could predict anything she said and did. He leaned back and put his hands together. "* All right. If you really want to kick things up - human!" He turned slightly in the waiter's direction with his face pointed upwards. "* Bring me a bottle of one of your stronger beverages."

She didn't like what was going on. She leaned onto the table with one elbow and pointed at him. "* What are you up to, now?"

Upon hearing her question, Krushe fixated her - there was a mischievous sparkle in his eyes and something different in his smile, and it remained while he took the newly-brought bottle and poured Undyne a glass of scotch. "* If you want make it a bit more exciting, how about you try easing things up like this?" How could she refuse? She grabbed the glass and downed it in one go.

She didn't feel it's rushing effects at all - or if she did, she suppressed it.

Unimpressed by her prowess, Krushe poured himself a glass and raised it. With one hand, he raised a finger, which was followed by a cheer from another aisle. When Undyne turned around to it, she found it to be occupied by Sans and Krushe's human friends. "* You? Sans, you too?" While Krushe was busy pouring the drink on the ground behind him, Sans kept Undyne's sight occupied with a brazenly disingenuous shrug. When she turned around, she found Krushe's glass to be empty. Once she was no longer facing them, Sans and the others hunched over the table and started giggling and rubbing their hands.

* * *

Undyne didn't look very convinced. "* I'm pretty sure that's not what happened. He's not the type for that anyway."

"* If you say so..." She was right though. There probably wasn't going to be much happening for the rest of the night, so she went to lock the outside doors. When she came back up though, Undyne was already asleep. She tried turning off the lights and doing the same, but she just couldn't. Was it the smell? Unlikely, there's been worse that didn't bother her the least bit. If she didn't have a recollection of what happened, and got what she had from this man, who knew what really happened? Even in the dark of the hall with turned-off lights, it wouldn't let her go. It wouldn't let her sleep. It was like this thing that kept pressing into her spine. And no, that wasn't Undyne's hand, though her hand was pressing into her spine too. She couldn't bear to just lie there, idle, for hours and hours waiting for time to pass and in a hopeless attempt at sleeping. At some point, she stopped overthinking it and just got up. The lights were off, as were the escalators, so she had to get a grip at the sides and slide her claws along while slowly sneaking her way down. She banged one of her feet against the cold, solid steel half-way down, but apparently, even the bang that this caused couldn't wake up someone with as deep a sleep as Undyne's.

Once downstairs at last, she put on her lab coat, dialed the door to open manually and pushed it open slowly enough to be sure that it wouldn't be what woke Undyne up, before she snuck off through Waterfall. If Sans was there when it all happened, he probably had a better idea of what exactly went down. She had to know. She didn't care what time it was. There was no way that drinking a few glasses of scotch got her so worked up. Something must have come up after that. Something big enough to upset her, and something that she couldn't or didn't want to tell about. Alphys dreaded to think about what things possibly happened between two drunk fish who had a tendency to spiral everything into more excitement. Yet with a mind as devious as hers, she couldn't keep herself from picturing the all the possible physicalities, sometimes in great detail and down to the written word.

There was no way around it. On the empty road between Snowdin and Waterfall, she stopped, picked out her phone and dialed Sans' number. It rung twice, then the phone was hung up. "* you called?" Alphys shrugged together and spun around. From one moment to the other, he was right behind her and smiling as if it was nothing. What was he doing and how did he get there? Never mind. If she played along with whatever he needed help with in the future, she would probably find out how he did that. "* if you changed your mind, they're already back."

She wove both hands, shook her head and cleared her mind of any irrelevant stuff she was thinking about. "* No, no, no, no Undyne's home. But...she didn't really remember what happened. I think there's something she's not telling me!"

The skeleton raised his hand and nodded. "* ah, i get it. she didn't tell ya all of it and now you want me to give ya all the nasty little details."

He really got her panicking for a second. She flailed her arms around all the more and tried to shake off those returning ideas. It was bad enough if she had them on her own, she didn't need him to bring them back. "* N-no! That's not what it's like!"

Sans grinned and placed both hands on his pelvic bones. "* so you're telling me, if there's any nasty details, ya don't wanna hear 'em?"

Okay, now he was just messing with her. "* Okay, okay. I want to hear all of it. I need to know, whatever it is."

He kept pressing her. "* ya really sure?"

"* Yes! I want to know it all!" When she realized that she was getting louder, she covered her mouth and checked if anyone was listening to them. Didn't seem like it. They were alone, in a dark night. Not that the days here weren't dark, but people were still asleep.

At once, his tense anticipation for getting little laughs out of Alphys's reactions faded, he put his hands back in his pockets and closed his eyes for a second. "* okay. i'll tell ya. no reason to hold anything back."

"* So? What happened?"

"* isn't it obvious? take a long, hard guess. remember who we're talking about. same old everything's-gotta-be-a-contest Undyne. whaddya think happened?" She was taking from his expression that she was supposed to be relieved. He was implying that what happened was predictable. Especially when looking at the result. She was drunk. Everything has to be a contest. "* all right. here's the whole story."

* * *

She fixated the other fish and smashed her fist against the table. "* Screw this!" Good, she caught his attention. "* I've had enough of your wimpy little dog and pony act! You wanna show me how tough you are? Human!" They were surrounded by humans, but the was shouting right at the waiter, who understood this as his cue to come closer. "* Bring me a mug of your stronger stuff!"

Finally, this guy was a bit unsettled. He looked after the disappearing staff member and then back at Undyne. "* What are you doing?"

"* You know! And even if you don't, you'll see!" When the waiter brought a bottle of scotch and two new glasses, she filled hers and downed it in one go! It felt like it shot right to her head and she needed a second to catch herself, before bawling right at him. "* Now you do the same! This 'date' is a drinking contest now!" From an aisle further away, that she hadn't paid attention to until then, suddenly everyone turned to her and put down their menus. When they started raising their voices for a simultaneous 'woo' with a gradually increasing pitch, she turned around to see that it was Krushe's human friends - and Sans! Did they follow them here? Or maybe they knew where they were going and were here the whole time. "* You? Sans, you too?" He just shrugged, this irreverent lackey! "* I'll remember this! And you!" She turned back to point at Krushe. "* Playing me like this, making me bet on winning on the one thing you do all-day-all-night for god knows how long! You're not as big as you're selling yourself! Unless you're gonna out-drink me right here right now!"

He was raising his hand to try and calm her down. "* I don't think that's a good idea."

But that only confirmed the suspicions she was raising. She pointed at him again. "* Aha! Chickening out as soon as you're not so prepared, right? Thought so!"

He was still collected, but she was getting to him. She was finally getting to him. She could see it in his eyes. His expression changed completely, all the soft parts of it vanished and he reached for the bottle with one hand. "* All right. You got me." He poured himself another glass and called for the waiter. "* I'd like to have more of what she is having." In the background, the guys in Sans' aisle were giving each other fives before resuming to watch Krushe down his first glass. After waiting a little while, both quickly felt the effects of it, a lot more strongly than it first seemed like, but who was going to just stop at this point? The next glass, they downed simultaneously. Then another one, then another one. Glass after glass. Eventually, Krushe raised his voice. "* Phew - wow..." Once it started settling in, Krushe shook his head, saw what Undyne was like and made her an offer. "* Wait a while?" She nodded. They did wait for a while. With them sitting there, their arms perched up against the edges of the table, piercing each other with their electrifying glares.

It was one of the most intense waiting sessions imaginable. Sans and the others stared at the spectacle very intently. They were both clasping the edges of the table, elbows raised as if they were about to jump up and attack each other any moment, and shot glares at each other with such tension, you expected little flashes of lightning between them. It was actually really exciting, in spite of the complete lack of movement, but before they spent too much time with this, Undyne raised her fist and smashed it against the table again, slowing it down on the way to be sure not to break it. When Sans checked later, she did make a bit of a crack, anyway. "* That's enough!"

"* No! Not it isn't."

She turned to the kitchen with a cutting motion. "* Next bottle!" The staff was concerned, but uninvolved human customers were already picking out their phones to film what was transpiring. No matter how unimportant it was. "* And make it something stronger!" Even stronger than what they were going with before?

From the looks on their faces, Krushe was clearly losing it, at least if this was about wanting to go further with this. "* Are you really sure?"

Undyne bore her teeth in a grin as wide as she had never shown one to this waterman. "* You getting cold feet?" One taunt was enough, and they soon got themselves two glasses to drink. In quick succession. At the same time. This musta been it. They were dangling in their chairs. And taking conscious deep breaths to keep themselves from throwing up. There was no way they could go much further. But the bottle wasn't empty. They were not done. They were both supporting themselves and yet balancing left and right as it was, but Undyne was content with pushing on. When she raised the bottle to pour in that last glass, Krushe first raised his hand to gesture her to stop, but she just spat at him. "* Calling Quits?" She was definitely winning when it came to wanting to go on, but looking back, that probably wasn't a good thing. Krushe made a pretty resigned impression. Not in terms of giving up their game, but giving up on mustering the nerve to object to her, so upon hearing that, he just wove at her with his fingers, asking her to bring it on without saying it. When the moment of truth came, not much changed at first. They were more tense, putting more effort into not moving. But Sans could see it on both of their faces. Krushe got right up and stumbled to the nearest staff member to ask for a bucket with water. And in as much a hurry as was possible for them, two humans came in carrying one. Krushe was - both of them were - consciously delaying what was very, very obviously going to happen, but the moment it was in sight, he sprinted right to it, dove his head in the water, and what followed didn't sound very appetizing. And didn't smell very appetizing either. But it all got out without making a mess.

Sans' honest judgment was that the guy was better at this. All this running and yet keeping it in, while with Undyne, it was building up and making her barf across the table and with droplets onto the floor around it, as well as her returning date's suit. It was probably only because Monsters being here and causing this much of a ruckus was bound to draw attention to this place, that they tolerated this for as long as it went on, but soon after this, staff was already coming to the table to ask them to leave. Of course Undyne was tenacious about this. When Krushe tried to talk her into coming along and leaving, she just slapped away the hand he was placing on her shoulder. She wasn't looking back at him. Not that there was much of a coherent look on her face. She was pretty knocked out for the most part. Just looking down and oftentimes with her eyes shut. Krushe on the other hand, could walk, took out the bills and gave them to one of his friends from where Sans was sitting and getting it through to staff, that they were gonna pay for the tab. Wasn't like they didn't get the bang for their buck after all.

The captain did resist for a bit, but he eventually refused to take her 'no's, and brought her to stand as far as she could, by placing one of her arms on his shoulder and supporting her that way. Still stumbling and never in a straight line, they started leaving the place. And from a distance, Sans kept an eye on them. It took Krushe a while from time to time, to figure out which directions to take, and at least once, he got it wrong, but he did make it back to the station. On the train - it wasn't like they were in enough shape to be aware of Sans keeping watch over them, they were sitting there. Undyne wasn't saying anything, and all that Krushe did was ask her if she felt better from time to time. The way back to the Underground wasn't much different from the way to the station either. And they were getting pretty far off for a while, until he got a car to stop to ask for directions. Sans would have stepped in at some point, but it never looked like they were gonna get lost for good, and them struggling to find their way home like this was just too much fun to watch.

* * *

"* You're a Jerk, Sans." Sans just shrugged and went on.

* * *

It wasn't clear whether they woke him up, or he was awake already but the two fish got Asgore worried as well. He was about to intervene, and accompanied them from the side opposite to Krushe to make sure they didn't fall off the bridges. He even asked if he could help them the rest of the way, but Krushe - both of them by then as far as Undyne was conscious enough, were dead set to move on no matter what. Sans couldn't follow them into the lift, but it did head straight for Hotland and they left with no change to them when they arrived. They had almost made it, but when they were closing in on the lab, he took a turn down to the river. He only decided to do that, when it came into his field of vision, so there must have been some sorta plan. Sans was just about to step in when he saw him jump in the water and drag her with him, but remembered what they were in the last moment. They could breathe under water just fine. When Krushe was about to throw up in the restaurant, he specifically wanted to 'drown' himself, and came out a lot more sober than Undyne was. So it wasn't hard to guess what came next. And sooner than he thought, a brown-ish cloud was rising up from below the water, followed by both Tideriders grabbing onto the rocky edge to pull themselves back up again. The guy patted her on the other shoulder one last time, and this time when he asked whether she was better, she nodded and opened her mouth again. "* Yeah yeah, I'm fine." The moment she was better, she pushed him away again, leaned against the wall, and asked what happened. Krushe told her a - simplified version of what happened. One where he himself didn't get talked into getting as wasted as she was, and once she could walk again on her own, she made for the lab.

When he stepped up the stairs, Sans came a lot closer and stayed right in front of him, until he noticed him. "* Sans? Sans thank god you're here!" Even when he did, he couldn't look him straight in the eyes. The relieved fish came closer, grabbed hold of him and almost fell back down the stairs if it weren't for the skeleton holding him tightly. "* I don't know if I can go all the way home like this. I'm just way too - exhausted - and..."

He just winked at him. "* don't worry, romeo. i gotcha covered."

Krushe shook his head to snap out of drifting off again. He seemed a lot more exhausted all of a sudden, now that he didn't have Undyne to look after any more. "* you do?"

"* yeah, i know a few shortcuts. you'll be home in no time."

Of course he had no idea and declined. "* No, no, it's way too far away. There's no way...there's just." Before he had any more of this, Sans took his hand, pulled him down the stairs, and guided him through some very quick shortcuts straight back to Darkmarsh lake, not far away from Krushe's red house. "* Woah...how'd you..."

"* told ya i've got you covered. you okay from here?"

Krushe looked back at his house one more time to be sure, and then agreed. "* Yeah, thanks a lot!...However You did that! I'll make it up to you." Even when disappearing between the trees, Sans made sure to watch from the distance to see if he actually did get back inside, before heading home himself.

* * *

Alphys was so relieved, when she heard it all to the end. "* he made her so angry, every time they met, me and his folks just wanted to see how far that could go. i'm not sure what you were thinking where this was going in a single date, but whatever it was, all the ideas that made you think it came from nobody other than you." When he walked back home, calm and with no intention to further go into this, Alphys was left standing there dumbstruck. All her worries were misplaced. She was so afraid about him. About the things he would do given the chance. They were all just having some shallow fun, and she was keeping herself away from it out of sheer envy, and from projecting her own dark thoughts onto the first person she could figure for them. It was silly to think he could just steal her away in one night. That said, after seeing how he sparked these thoughts in her nonetheless, she had to admit herself that he was pretty hot.


	31. The Magnificent Machine

.

A Doctor's Duty

Chapter 20

The Magnificent Machine

* * *

Everyone had had their fun with Undyne, but they soon resumed their routines for the following days. The workers tearing down, raising, and adding layer after layer of completion on the buildings around Farfoot village weren't becoming less, they were becoming more, and the more crowded it became, the faster things got done. Everyone who was anyone among Underground construction workers from far and wide wanted to be able to say that they did their part in this. The ability to magically shape the materials they used made for an easier construction, seeing as any error could be easily corrected, where humans would have to remove everything and get new materials altogether. On the days, where he had his lessons, Papyrus proved as reliable as Sans knew him and went to his classes way ahead of time. He on the other hand, made sure to supply the workers with food as well as he could, and some competition had gathered as well. As for Undyne, normalcy returned to her days for the most part. Except that Alphys made the whole Monster-career thing a gigantic project, with getting Asgore to sign forms over forms over forms over forms to ensure that everyone that would apply had - by authority of the king of Monsters - whether warranted or not - the qualification to enroll. Not all of them would be admitted, sure. Not all of them would have a place to live up here, but Alphys wanted to do her job to the best of her ability to make sure that everyone - as far as Monsters' involvement was concerned, got their chance. Everyone who didn't pursue the path she was preparing for them, would have to get into a trade on the surface. Everything else they would see. Frisk traveled the Underground to visit each one of them occasionally.

Eventually, Undyne found herself accompanying Alphys for the final step of the currently possible in her project. They traveled into the city, to the campus, drawing the looks of passengers for multiple reasons. Alphys was dragging around cases filled with nothing other than envelopes - each one containing all the necessary annexes to apply - she apparently made sure of that on several trips here on her own. Everyone else was carrying their stuff in normal bags, the two of them were the only ones with cases. They must have looked like tourists to all these humans. And that wasn't that far off in a way. When they arrived at the office, there was a Temmie sitting at the counter, as usual with her way of jumping from one emotion to another one. She was currently trembling with tears running down her face. "* butt if Monst4rs no go to cooleg, dey can haf no degwees! dey nid degwees"

And the secretary was eating it right up, patting the little vibrating creature on the head. "* No need to worry, we'll see what we can do. Oh look, there she is already." Alphys looked pretty exhausted. And no wonder, she had spent the entire night just checking if all these envelopes had all that they needed, the right names and so on. Undyne probably wouldn't have come along otherwise, but Alphys had her a bit worried, and this seemed really damn important to her. The relief on the doctor's face when this was all over, and the Temmie jumped off the desk to go god-knew-where, was overwhelmingly apparent. They bumped into that half-Orc from almost a week ago, too. But shaking him wasn't hard at all. It seemed they had met on Alphys' earlier trips here already. She had only been here a few times, and was already making friends. Alphys sure was a lot more sociable up here than she used to be.

What Sans had a hard time believing, when Papyrus left for his classes, was that he would already have his first practical lesson. He had only had three lessons and they were already letting him behind a wheel? Not impossible, just something he didn't expect. He wasn't inside. And there really was a car driving around on the course, in fact, when Sans came by, it hadn't just moved a only a bit slightly forwards and backwards, it was driving across the course and parking at the start again. Yet when he came closer, it really was Papyrus behind the steering wheel. "* hey guys. how's it getting along?"

The human teacher looked confused. Sans was confused too, but he had learned in life never to just question things that happened before his very eyes. They always turned out not to be so impossible after all. He looked back down at his clipboard. It had a makeshift non-test, but all the boxes were checked. "* I don't know what to say. Are you sure you haven't done this before?"

Papyrus wove that aside with his eye-sockets closed. "NEVER TOUCHED A REAL ONE IN MY LIFE."

"* until we got up here."

Pap was already getting out, picking up his chestplate that he had taken off and put aside and left to wait on the sidewalk for Sans to follow, while his teacher continued. "* If I had to judge just by him trying to drive - I'd believe he already has his license. It's like he's been doing this for years."

Driving for years, right? Sans could already figure how this was the case. Papyrus' old belongings. There was a police badge among them, from the very department they visited, and he somehow knew exactly what got those officers to open up. He was driving a car, when the doc first crashed into him, and now he could miraculously drive as if he had experience doing it. The dream that Papyrus always had, the one he talked about to everyone he hoped to call his friend. The dream of driving along the road with the wind in his hair. It wasn't a dream. It was his last memory as a human. But Sans couldn't tell some human stranger how, so he played it off. "* prolly just a natural. but he's really looking forward to gettin' it. The sooner you're ready to see if he's any good on the road, the better."

The man smiled. "* We'll see what we can do. But I have a busy schedule. I'll see you tomorrow." Papyrus winked at him with a thumbs up, then gestured Sans to get a move on more urgently than the last time he probably ignored it. Once they were out of hearing range though, Sans asked Papyrus to stay there, and went back to the human that was walking back inside to wrap things up.

"* hey, wait." Once he had his attention, he picked out a few bills and started whispering. "* so, if ya really trust him on this, could ya make the next 'mock' test a real one?"

The teacher looked back with an unsure expression. "* What's with the secrecy? Do you want it to be a surprise?" Sans nodded and one hand-to-hand transaction of the testing fee later, the deal was made. He was going to frame the next 'mock test' as just that and they were gonna see from there.

* * *

Alphys was lucky to catch a full night's sleep after a week of non-stop collecting and putting together applications, to finally catch up on all the sleep she had relinquished in the past few days. Of course, she wasn't really that lucky, but when someone was at the door the next morning, Undyne went to tell the mailman that whatever he wanted, could wait. But he had instructions to be insistent enough to get her to accept the envelope he had brought for Alphys. Once the doors were closed again, she sat down. There wasn't much for her to do. She didn't need more sleep and who knew when Alphys was going to wake up. But she couldn't just leave her like this, what if someone came in here? Being awake alone like this left her with little to do but to wander up and down the cold floor. She thought about reading some manga, but she didn't like these black and white frames that let you see barely anything, because the short and narrow panels only ever showed what was in the immediate focus most of the time. And she didn't like the stuff they had around here either. Alphys had several volumes of one series that looked really interesting at first glance, but she had already made the mistake of actually reading it, only to find out that it was no more than a high school romance series, and the whole thing being set with giant robots and even bigger space stations was only a gimmick for the most part.

It didn't get much less weird when she went to the computer to see if she could find some new anime for herself to enjoy. She tried not to look at Alphys' browsing history, but when recommendations popped up while she was typing in search terms, she was already confronted with some weird names she couldn't imagine anything that they could mean. While browsing through online databases and opening up the pages of fun-sounding titles, her eyes kept drifting over to that envelope. What was so important that it couldn't wait for a day when Alphys wasn't catching up on her accumulated exhaustion from this overbearing college project? Several times, she caught herself thinking about just opening it. And every time, she did her best to get herself distracted by reading through these summaries. By the time Alphys got up, and came downstairs, what she found when she was done yawning, was Undyne sitting at the computer, extremely stiff, her entire body braced to attack something that was on the fridge, and the browser was opened to look at the summaries and episode lists of lots of different series, in fact so many of them were open, both screens combined weren't wide enough to display all the tabs in the top bar. "* Uh...g-good morning? What happened here?" When she threw a close look at what was on that fridge, she saw a paper cover, which she quickly opened with a scalpel from down below, for lack of a letter opener. "* It's from Mettaton!"

"* I knew that much!", the worked up captain snapped. There was a reason why it was bigger than an everyday letter. There was a letter inside, but with it, tickets. Five tickets to the first provisory attempt at performing 'The Magnificent Machine', live and exclusive in the Victortheatre.

"* Dear Alphys...", the letter read. "* I know you must be buried in work. You must be exhausted beyond belief and dying for a relaxing evening with some quality entertainment. But fear not, because I have been very busy as well. Our show stage is nearly complete and already ready to rehearse the first act to be performed on the surface. My only real worry is that whatever is too bold and inspired by what humans have, might become out of touch with what my wonderful audience in the Underground likes. For this reason, before we open in front of bigger and more open audiences, we wish to try it out with something small. An audience big enough to give feedback, but not big enough to allow a disaster, should they not like it. I trust your judgment in finding people to give them to, so with this letter come five tickets for our first performance. Bring any Monsters you like. Yours, the most incredible of machines, Mettaton."

When she was done reading it, she handed it to Undyne, who was eager to know what all this was, she almost tore the letter out of her hand. Her curiosity faded very quickly once she read it as well. "* Yeah...count Me out." She never really liked Mettaton.

"* B-but..."

"* You'll find some who want. If you don't, just call me, I'm sure Papyrus wouldn't say no." Before Alphys had much of a chance to try and persuade her, she was already walking out of the door. "* I'm off working out. Only stayed that long, because I couldn't just leave you here like this." And all of a sudden, Alphys was on her own. So she would have to find four people to bring along within - wait. She stared at her phone with horror. Seven hours! She had slept for half a day. No wonder the thirst was killing her. Finding the first two of four was a walk in the park. Before she did anything else, she called Bratty and Catty. From the squee in the background that followed telling them what it was about, she could guess ahead of time that their last direct encounter with Mettaton hadn't diminished their excitement for him in the slightest. Bratty accepted immediately and agreed to wait at the resort. They would do anything for something like this. Including not getting too loud about it if they didn't like it. What was going to be harder was to find two more.

After she left and locked up the lab, the third Monster to bring along was more or less waiting at the door. "* h0i!" Another Temmie that got lost and found herself here. They were getting lost and ending up near the lab an awful lot recently. Sure, wasn't really much of a deep-thinking audience, but she was a Monster and if she said bad things about it, people would believe it was a game or made up, rather than that a Temmie was at an exclusive performance. Traveling through Hotland was pretty fruitless beyond that. Most of the grown-ups were either working to produce a surplus of stuff to sell to humans or helping with the construction above. Only in a far corner, near the path to a school, she came by someone who was interested. A teenager who she knew to be a member of Mettaton's fanclub. A Diamond boy, who's parents were probably busy cutting and smoothing out the interior of houses on the surface. He agreed and came along without further ado. He didn't say a word about it, but Alphys figured his parents would want to know where he went, and if he was in safe hands, so she demanded that he at least tried to contact them, which took several attempts.

The other two were waiting at the resort and immediately recognized the concerned doctor with a Temmie on the shoulder. "* Eeek! Is that one of those Temmies?"

"* Aaah it's so cute."

"* I could eat it right up!" Bratty was hopefully joking with that last one.

Of course the poor thing was vibrating upon hearing that. "* n0es! u no It TEM!" It only calmed down after Catty held the sweating critter.

"* No! No, we would never hurt you!"

Their eyes for the little one didn't last for long. Before there was much time to stay in place, the man of the evening himself came in from the bridge to the Core. "* IF IT ISN'T THE MAGNIFICENT DOCTOR! AND WITH ALL THE COMPANY YOU NEED!" He scooted over between Alphys and the others and held up one hand to 'whisper' to her. "I NEED SOME HELP BEFORE WE HEAD OFF." He backed off and clapped his hands once. "* SCOTT! KEEP OUR WONDERFUL AUDIENCE HAPPY FOR THE TIME BEING! ME AND DOCTOR ALPHYS HAVE SOME BUSINESS TO DISCUSS!" While the others were led to the restaurant, hopefully to get served something for before they would wait or head off. Alphys was led to a recently arranged-for side room near the entrance of the Core.

"* THE PARTIAL TRANSFORMATION. CAN YOU UNLOCK IT?" She was dumbstruck for a moment. Because his human form wasn't complete, it had to be activated manually. The power consumption was a mess. There was a mostly done function that could bypass it though, at least for the legs, but the thought of unlocking it left Alphys concerned. It wasn't really done, and the legs would consume power like his human body. Bringing that up didn't convince him to drop the idea though. Neither did bringing up that it hadn't been tested yet. "* I WON'T HAVE ANY MORE OBJECTIONS! I NEED THOSE LEGS. TONIGHT!" Alphys sighed and agreed. So long as he was careful, he could only run out of power after all. One process of screwing open the metal casing and flipping a deliberately hard-to-flip switch later, it was unlocked. From here on in, he could - albeit not without some getting used to, draw the wheel back in and replace it with his lengthy legs that he kept insisting was what humans and Monsters would be all over. "* WONDERFUL. WE NEED TO GO RIGHT NOW, SO I HAVE TIME TO PRACTISE PUTTING THEM TO USE!" From the looks of it, the people Alphys had brought along hadn't had as much time on their own, as she had expected. They were getting up right upon seeing her, the Temmie standing on the table and staring at Bratty, while staring profusely.

To everyone's relief though, there was nothing stopping them from departing. The Temmie jumped back on Alphys' shoulder, as soon as she was close enough and the two Monsters that hadn't before, were faced with once again witnessing the spectacle outside. A lot of the houses were finished as far as you could see from outside. And still, the area around the old human village was still crawling with Monsters, still working on finishing up the interior and exterior of so many houses with an enormous intensity. On a select few, far in the distance, especially a particularly odd-shaped and big one that Alphys was looking forward to living in, they were wrapping up and removing the scaffolding on the outsides.

The Diamond Boy in particular had never been here and in spite of Alphys paying extra attention to not losing him, he kept really close to the others, while Bratty and Catty, who had been up here a few times at this point, were trailing off and goofing around on the opposite sidewalk. Even this place was probably nothing to the surroundings they would pass by train. The Temmie was getting extra skittish upon getting on the ride though. Of course the girls had nothing but eyes for Mettaton. "* PLEASE, ONE AT A TIME!", he said while he tried to get them to not completely overwhelm him with questions. Alphys had to admit though, being exposed to him this long worked wonders to get them a little less perpetually freaked out about the entire evening.

Once they all stood at the entrance, where Monsters were still hanging on the outside wall and polishing the facade of an old but restored, public building, indicated that this was what they were looking for. Mettaton disappeared inside after telling them when exactly it would be time. They ended up trying to kill time by walking around the theatre's neighbourhood and stopping by all the shops they crossed. The district was pretty far out, but still within the heavily-built-on inside of the city. In the distance, just across the train tracks from the station Alphys had seen several large storage and manufacturing facilities. The surrounding area was lined not with well-decorated stores, but discounters, convenience stores and a bakery here and there. The people walking the streets were in most cases not human. One place they could remain at, was the little store that MTT had already set up at the side of Mettaton's theatre, which was selling all manner of Mettaton merchandise, most of which she recognized as what they already sold in the Underground. There were no customers except for themselves yet, the interior wasn't cleaned out with ladders and other pieces of equipment still strewn around on the floor. On top of that, it was as overpriced in human currency as it was with G in the Underground.

She bought something small for everyone regardless, except for the Temmie, who didn't seem to want anything, despite being asked several times. By the time they were done, it was getting time to head inside. Scott was waiting past the door to mark their tickets and let them in. It was fairly standard on the inside. A wooden stage was built at the bottom of the hall, with tall red curtains hanging down from above and covering most of it. Rows of dark blue seats were arranged with each row at a different height to allow everyone to look over one another and see the show. The dark walls and the dim light allowed to focus on the well-lit stage and the seats were comfortable, uniform seats like in - much like all of this - a cinema. One reason why they got construction going so quickly, must have been that they knew exactly what to build and how to build it from the very start, because they re-used the blueprint of what they had in the Underground. Alphys' guess was that it was probably a theatre in both senses and could be quickly repurposed to broadcast Mettaton's movies.

They were alone here, and if Scott could be taken by his word, the tickets not listing any seat numbers was because this really was no more than an exclusive rehearsal and it really was only the five of them that would make up the audience, which got Bratty and Catty so excited, they were forcibly pushing Alphys and the Diamond boy to the center of the very first row. From time to time, a Monster came down the stairs at the side and hurried to disappear behind the curtain or to leave from behind it and rush through the door to the side. At some point, while they were getting comfortable and the Temmie started vibrating to then launch herself off of Alphys' shoulder, into the air and to land flawlessly on the seat to the right of all of them, Napstablook came by and floated above their heads, through the closed curtain and onto the stage.

Alphys rested her head on the backrest, closed her eyes and sighed. All she could hear was the slurping noises of Bratty finishing a sugary soft drink they had bought in a little fast food counter on their way in. They had made it all in one piece and without any trouble. Now the show just had to be good enough for the four of them not to lose their patience. The deep, ominous tunes of a slow piano solo started to play, while the already dim lights got turned off completely and show lights from above were turned on and directed at the opening-up curtain. It was a lot more plain than she had expected. He was probably hoping to play it safe and keep the act as simple as he could to test the waters on what humans liked. If that was the problem though, he could always just come to Alphys and ask her. There was a flat grey wall behind the curtain. Napstablook was sitting in the left corner with Shyren floating next to him, and operating a soundboard with two vinyl discs. On the other side stood a more than embarrassed-looking Burgerpants dressed up as a shrubbery like in a cheap threatre.

A wooden panel on the floor of the stage slid aside, to reveal an opening and a little lift that was raising and presenting the rectangular star of the show. Once he was all the way up on the stage, Mettaton applauded himself and greeted the five of them as if all the seats were sold out. "* WELCOME, BEAUTIES AND GENTLEBEAUTIES! WELCOME TO THE FIRST MONSTER-MADE ACT PERFORMED ON THE SURFACE - BROUGHT TO YOU BY VICTOR ENTERPRISES AND MTT INC - THE MAGNIFICENT MACHINE - titleisaworkinprogress." PREPARE TO BE SHOCKED! ELECTRIFIED! AWESTRUCK! WE WILL BRING YOU ENTERTAINMENT LIKE YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE!" When Napstablook started playing the familiar, distinct piano track, Alphys knew the show had already started. It was a bit bland as it looked in the very beginning. There was nothing happening except Mettaton rolling left and right on his wheel, before lowering his body. Once it was on the ground, he switched out his wheel for his legs, and raised his body to present them and start dancing in place with those legs. When she started getting disappointed, thinking that this was going to be it, the music suddenly got a lot louder, accelerated, the showlights switched from crass colour to crass colour, and from both sides, a troupe of male Monsters in flustering, tight dancing suits came running on stage and started performing a synchronous dancing act, which prompted blushes and sounds of excitement from the two particularly enthused girls in the audience.

Alleycats, bunnies, brainlizards, even a boss monster and a Tiderider...wait. When all the male background dancers turned around to face the audience, she recognized the Tiderider. It was Krushe, and in the one moment he had when he and the others had to freeze up for a dramatic pause, he winked at Alphys as well. After the pause, the music picked up again and all the male background dancers rushed off and outside, only for a broad line of female ones to follow in short skirts you could look under, while they were being let down onto the stage from above, before they undid the harnesses that bound them to the ropes, and assumed position for their part in this pretty open dance act. Oh god! In their years together in the Underground, she had talked with Mettaton about humans regularly and mentioned that sex seems to sell with them, but wasn't this a bit much?

She was lucky that she was here with Bratty and Catty, who more than enjoyed this show and the Diamond boy wasn't all that young either. The Temmie wasn't even looking at the stage most of the time. Not before long, both dancing crews were gone for the time being and what followed this opening act appeared to be best described as 'Mettaton the Musical'. For different characters and in costumes to match them, the dancers came back a few at a time to reenact Mettaton's life from being a ghost and more and more family members leaving to fuse with and become different objects, to being left behind, him meeting Burgerpants in a lab coat with fake yellow spikes affixed to the back of his head and something below the lab coat to make him look a lot thicker than he was. That was probably supposed to be Alphys and she wasn't sure if she liked how lazy she was, portrayed in the beginning of it.

Towards the middle, it was high time for him to 'assume his new body', which was really just Mettaton pulling off the pink sheets he had covered himself in before. The second act was the romanticised story of a booming company, that of course did only the very best to produce the best good for everyone to enjoy. It was stuffed with gravy so much, it even had a short scene dedicated only to customers thanking Mettation for all that he sold to them. It got a bit better towards the third act, which basically began with Frisk's arrival in the Underground and Alphys begging the busy robot to join together with her for an elaborate act. It ended with the scene in the second act, where Mettaton had a solo number to sing about wanting to look like a human, getting it's payoff with Mettaton's true human form getting revealed - this time through an actual transformation - in the final battle against 'Frisk', portrayed by a Brainlizard child with a brown wig and a striped sweater. It ended with all the performers coming on stage at once, with no costumes and no dancing suits, but normal clothes to join into one large choir that hailed the Monsters' newfound freedom.

When it was all done and the girls were applauding the bowing humanoid machine, Alphys was relieved that at least, they had dodged one bullet by framing the story in a way that made it seem like any need to kill the human was just part of the act. Once the entire team of performers was done bowing out and leaving the stage, Mettaton reverted to his normal form and rolled back. "* THANK YOU. YOU ARE THE MOST WONDERFUL OF AUDIENCES!" He left for the side right away, as did everyone this time. The room grew darker and the show lights went out. A white screen rolled itself out along the wall behind him and footage was projected onto it from above. It was apparently switching to cinema mode. Mettaton's theatre, like himself, could transform from one thing to another.

"* This Fall" It was the trailer for a movie. The 'screen' faded in an out of close-up shots of Mettaton's human form and 'metallic looking' letters on a black background. "* Comes a whole new experience. Sit back and enjoy, when MTT INC takes motion picture to a whole new..." What faded in for a moment, was a moved shot of the landscape right below the cliff outside of Asgore's castle from before construction of their Monster village had begun. "* ...level." Right after that, it cut to a clip of Mettaton embracing a female bunny, filmed in some house in broad daylight. "* Watch in awe as Mettaton discovers his human side..." The next images that faded in, depicted a human without showing his face, bumping his fists together on which he was wearing boxing gloves in a small wrestling or boxing arena. "* ...and faces off with adversaries, never seen before." It went on like this, with cut-together shots of locations, characters and so on. "* Prepare to see Mettaton like you have never seen him before. With new friends - new places - new enemies - and the stakes higher than he ever thought." Finally, the trailer was coming to it's end when the titles were dropped just after showing Mettaton with boxing gloves charging towards the human that was teased before. "* Mettaton XXIX - Sucker punching up - Coming to a cinema near you!"

When the projector was turned off, the lights started to turn on, and the Diamond boy and the Temmie yawned. Alphys was left with a question to ask the nearing robot. "* You did all this in three weeks?"

Mettaton raised and lowered himself to appear startled. "* OH FAR FROM IT! WE ONLY HAD TIME FOR THE TRAILER. THE FILM IS UP NEXT."

It wasn't like they weren't squeeing before, but from the sounds of it, the two to her right were all the more excited about Mettaton's newest shovelware movie. All new, now with humans. "* We've got to see that movie when it's out!"

"* I've been waiting for this since Mettaton twenty-eight!"

Bratty and Catty turned to each other. "* Getting hype?" They asked in sync, then both responded: "* Getting hype!" This really must have been an unbelievable day for them.

When everyone was wrapping up this show, Mettaton asked the five of them what impression they got. The girls had nothing coherent to say. The Diamond thought the 'opera' was to long and Temmie complimented their nice projectors. Temmie then turned to Alphys and added. "* Wi r mek moosic al 2 4 vil lag!"

Alphys didn't know what this was about and just affirmed it, before making sure that everyone was ready to leave. After they left, she made sure to head straight for the station and then for the Underground with no stops or detours. All that she had once Bratty and Catty were back in the streets of New Home, the Temmie back in Waterfall, the Diamond Boy back with his parents, and she herself back in the lab, she was overcome with relief. This was all wrapped up, and there was no incidents, no forgotten items, no people getting lost or being disappointed by the show, all had ended well. She was exhausted right away again, when she made it back to her unfolding bed.

* * *

It took another week and several lessons, until Sans got a call from Papyrus' driving teacher. They had conducted mock tests in the last three lessons he had, and the last one wasn't really a mock test. It had taken another two days to submit all his data and get his license printed, and today was the day for him to receive it. Only that Papyrus was the only one among the three of them that didn't know. His brother was already on his way, so Sans needed to show up at the offside building alone and wait for him to arrive. He went inside and waited at the reception. When the human came out from behind after dismissing previous customers, he could tell from his grin that it was indeed ready. And on time almost to the second, Papyrus came in, ready to learn what he had proven he had already nailed down. "HELLO! WHAT DO WE START WITH TODAY? WHERE ARE THE OTHERS?" He was also confused as to why Sans was here, but his brother had been stopping by several times at this point.

The teacher grinned and kept his hands at the shelves below the counter. "* They're not coming today. I wanted to dedicate the time to congratulating you." He was probably holding the little plastic card this was all about in his hand in that very moment.

The skeleton raised the upper end of one of his eye-sockets. "WHAT?" Sans had played so many pranks on him opening up like this, he had grown very skeptical, every time he was told there was reason for congratulations. He did get that this musta had to do with why Sans was here, which was all the more of a reason not to trust it.

"* You won't be needing any more lessons." He picked up what they were talking about and placed it on the table. A shiny plastic card with an old passport photo they had made with a salvaged photobooth from the dump, was smiling at the taller skeleton it was taken from. It listed the day that Papyrus was 'created' as a birth date. As a surname, after the forename, it just read 'the Great' and a few patterns were printed around the rest of it, that probably served as an indicator of it's authenticity. "* You already passed your test."

He still wasn't believing it. He threw Sans a distrusting look. "THIS IS JUST ONE OF YOUR JOKES, ISN'T IT? BOTH OF YOU WANT ME TO THINK THAT."

It was probably best to go with it and see how long it took for Papyrus to wrap his head around it. Sans shrugged. "* i dunno what you're talking about."

This seemed to disgruntle his brother. "OKAY THEN. IF I PASSED THIS TEST AND THIS IS REAL, THEN I SURE CAN DRIVE AROUND WITH THIS!" He picked up the license.

"* knock yourself out." Papyrus tried to walk outside with his license very conspicuously and kept looking back to see if they would stop him. And was all the more surprised when they didn't. "* go ahead. nobody's stoppin' ya." The human offered the school's car, which Papyrus happily took him up on. Sure, it said 'driving school' on the outside, but that didn't mean much if it wasn't on his teacher's working hours. With no clipboard, no nothing, he got in on one side, and Sans on the other. "* ya really not believing us?"

"WE WILL SEE HOW REAL IT IS.", he insisted. They started heading out for a little more than just a tour around the block. He tried passing all kinds of roads at least once and eventually pulled up near a local policewoman that was attaching parking tickets to due vehicles. "OFFICER!" Papyrus got out of the car and marched up to the uniformed woman. "OFFICER! THESE TWO ARE LETTING ME DRIVE AROUND WITH A FAKE LICENSE!" At first, she was intimidated at the sight of a man-sized, walking skeleton approaching her like that, then she was furious upon hearing what he had to say. Papyrus picked out the solid plastic card from a pocket and showed it to her.

She was about to ask Sans and Papyrus' driving teacher some serious questions about what Papyrus was saying, but paused when she saw the license. She took it from the skeleton's hand and gave it a close examination. It took a little while, probably to assure herself of it's authenticity however she did that, but eventually, her expression loosened up and she gave it back. "* It checks out. That's not a fake license."

"WHAT? ARE YOU SURE?"

"* It'd be some grade A work if this was fake. You want me to go to the department and get it checked there?"

Papyrus looked back at the other two, but turned to the officer with newfound resolve. "YOU KNOW WHAT? YES. THAT SOUNDS LIKE A GOOD IDEA." Without further ado, she wrapped up what she was doing here and got into her own vehicle to lead the way. They stayed outside after Papyrus gave her his license to watch her walk inside. It only took a few minutes until she came back with a smile and gave it back. "* Nope, there's an entry. This is definitely a real one." It was only when the officer was walking back to her own vehicle and left behind a baffled skeleton in this one, that it started to dawn on him.

"BUT..."

"* told ya, that last one with the dmv guy was real."

"BUT...I DIDN'T KNOW."

"* nobody's gonna know you didn't."

"AND THE FEE?"

"* i paid it."

"BUT THEN..."

"* maybe you're just really good at this."

It took Papyrus a few minutes of introspection, until he came to - at least to a degree - warm up to the idea. "I - UH..." It was fun to watch his eye-sockets widen, then his googly eyes show for a brief moment. "WOWIE! IT REALLY IS REAL!" He got out and passed the keys right to his relieved teacher, before opening the back door to pick out his chestplate and put it on. He then stood straight and pointed roughly towards the last station they came by. "SANS! TO THE UNDERGROUND!" With his chestplate back off, he sat in the back and was driven to the station, where he paced up and down the platform while he and Sans waited for the train. It was getting noon. If they headed off to get the paperwork for accessing the account Sans had prepared for this occasion, they could buy and try out his brother's dream car on the same day. This was what Papyrus was referring to, when he sat down in the train and said: "IF WE GET THE BANK STUFF, I CAN FINALLY SIT IN IT!"

"* yep."

"TURN IT ON!"

"* pretty much."

"CRUISE AROUND."

"* no problem."

"LIVE THE DREAM!"

"* with the wig?"

Papyrus shook his head. "NOW THAT'S JUST SILLY, OF COURSE I DON'T NEED MY BLONDE HAIR." That was a relief. "THAT COMES LATER."

"* maybe we don't need to go get the bank stuff." Papyrus was all the more surprised when Sans pulled out the folder with the paperwork from his jacket. There was no need to head for the Underground. They could go to Carson's right away. All it took from there, was Sans signing two copies of a transaction contract from there, for the two of them and Mr.. Carson to stand around Papyrus' newly acquired car.

"* You want to give it a try?", the salesman asked.

The beaming skeleton, googly eyes hanging out, moved the front and back seats to make space for Sans and his chestplate, which he took off and used the key he finally acquired to turn it on. The motor's droning almost startled him, he was so excited. He could navigate out of the thoroughly covered car park with ease. "* so uh, whaddya wanna start with?"

While still maneuvering through the short roads, he raised a finger for a moment, then remembered how recently acquired his license and put it back on the wheel. "FIRST...", he started with a raised voice, only to pause and go on with a lowered voice. "WE REFUEL IT, BECAUSE I WON'T GET VERY FAR WITH THE TANK ALMOST EMPTY." But his enthusiasm came back, when he continued with what he really wanted to do. "THEN WE TOUR THE CITY." They drew a lot of curious looks from passerbys, both on foot and in other cars. Some looked worried, but seeing Papyrus maneuver a roundabout with no trouble certainly helped instill some faith. Sans helped make sure they got the right kind of fuel, but then he got out. "HEY, WHERE ARE YOU GOING?"

"* got some stuff to do, and i wouldn't wanna be a drag on your first day with this thing."

"BOGUS! YOU'RE NOT A DRAG! YOU MADE THIS POSSIBLE!", his brother shouted after him.

"* i'll keep in touch, you enjoy your new ride." Sans wove around his phone while he went around the corner to disappear from there. Of course he wasn't planning on missing out on Papy's fun, but why limit himself to just sitting around in a calm ride? He instead went back to the Underground, where he fetched one of the spare Sans-bikes they had stored over time. A lime one made for a good match.

Only when he was back in the city, did he call up Papyrus to see where he was. He got him to describe where he was and the route he was taking, before he could pick up Sans. The highway he was on was followed by a pretty long bridge. Perfect actually. He got on the road to chase him. Papyrus was just getting on the broad bridge when Sans got him in sight. This was gonna make for a good surprise. Papyrus was enjoying his time, calmly moving along while taking in the wind blowing onto his skull and the outskirts of Enkate City passing by below. It was pretty empty, but it was surprising nonetheless that a small skeleton was catching up from behind on no more than a tricycle. "WHAT?" Papyrus was startled upon seeing that for a moment. To add to that, Sans was only using one hand and winked at him when he passed him. "HOW ARE YOU DOING THIS?" Sans did him one better and sped ahead. And soon, the two of them were in a little race, for as far as they could go until they reached the other side of the bridge. Once they were off it, and back in the more thoroughly driven-on roads, where they had to go a lot more slowly, Papyrus pulled over on the first opportunity to question Sans about all of this and help him get his tricycle between the seats. "WHAT WAS THAT?"

"* what was what?"

"YOU...I WAS..."

"* i've...been working out ever since we came up here?"

"WOW! YOU REALLY ARE IMPROVING YOURSELF." Dodged one bullet. "BEING UP HERE IS DEFINITELY DOING YOU GOOD!" This time, Papyrus insisted that Sans stuck with him for the ride. From then on in, they spent the rest of the afternoon just driving around town to check out all sorts of different places and see how they connected. Doing it that way gave a much better spacial idea of the city's layout than relying on maps and the public transportation system. When they came back towards the evening and Sans already mentally preparing for this day's shifts running his hot dog stands, including getting Papyrus signed up to help him cover at least one of his stands, they saw that barely anyone was really adding anything on the outsides of the buildings or carrying any materials into them. The construction and finishing steps of every house the Monster workers weren't already done with, was getting wrapped up and most of the scaffolding was already removed and being prepared to be returned to where it came from. Their time of only ever leaving the Underground to explore the city or prepare their future life was coming to an end. Their village was finally built.


	32. Mixed Loyalties

.

A Doctor's Duty

Chapter 21

Mixed Loyalties

* * *

"Okay, enough recovering from saving the village, back to what matters. What was next up?"

"centaurs?"

"Oh, right. Centaurs. We were bound to get to those sooner or later. The centaurs are pathetic creatures. Very weak Monsters, and what temporarily played out like their greatest strengths is part of why they are so pathetic. It's willingness to commit treason. There is treason upon a kingdom or a nation - which depending on the situation can be forgivable, and then there is treason upon one's own kind, which isn't. They betrayed Monsters - their own kind - all over the world, by telling a few humans about the sacrilege and committing it sevenfold."

"Sacrilege?"

"You know, the thing that Monsters should never do? Taking a human's soul? The reason why it's considered a sacrilege at any time where it's possibility is of relevance - meaning before and after Monsters were sealed in the Underground with no human soul to take, is that life - every time - proves it to be a massive mistake. Whenever a Monster takes a human soul, it ends very badly for them. In fact part of the reason why Monsters were sealed away, was that Asgore committed it. Then, half a millennium later, his son did and we all know how well that went for him, don't we?"

"Without taking human souls, how were w-we supposed to get out?"

"That is exactly the right question. That is why it is so severe. Unless someone had a to them inconceivable means of bypassing it, like - I don't know - a time machine, they forced us to commit it as often as they did, lest we be banished forever otherwise. Luckily, you, Alphys, found another way to bypass a Monster having to take seven souls."

"I did?"

"Yes. But nonetheless, taking a human soul ending badly dates well before that. Whether it's fate or just the nature of what it makes possible, a Monster taking a human soul always ends in disaster. Now, back to the centaurs. They revealed that it is possible to at least one human and took the souls of seven unwitting humans that were sent to them to banish us into the Underground. They committed treason on a scale that nobody expected anyone to ever commit it.

The reason they occasionally try to intimidate us, and tried to intimidate you, is because they are afraid. They're afraid of what we'll do to them. They know what they're guilty of, and they know a punishment that fits the extent of what they did - whatever it ends up being - would be so severe that it would make them go extinct either way. Much like Elves actually, they have an existential fear of just punishment for their actions. The thought of ever being held accountable terrifies them. A well-justified fear if you ask me. You can joke about Chara's outlook on life as much as you like, but she was right about one thing. This kind of treason against one's own race being tolerated among humans is why humans are in as desperate a situation as they are. I don't intend for this to go that way for Monsters."

"Oh g-g-g-od"

"Oh god indeed. Their fears are well justified. Now that I'm back, you've seen what the CATS can do, I can scale it further up quite a bit. Centaurs usually live isolated and huddled up in villages, they make for easy targets. If they send an attack our way one more time, Asgore won't be asking where they went, because if they disappear and their villages turn into craters, he will know what happened to them. And now, so will you."

* * *

He already knew it was going to be a bad day, when it wasn't his alarm clock, but his mother, that woke him up. "* Get up already!" Mesut's mother had a grin on her face, that was so big, it seemed like it was angling her tusks a bit inwardly. "* Ugulo is rallying people. I want you to see this!" Oh god, please not. Ugolo K'Tenga was the brother of Mawab K'Tenga and took over an army of thugs, marketed as a humanitarian front for Orc rights, known as Protect Orc Bodies. And his mother bought into their lies hook, line and sinker. All right, if it got too bad, he could just go home and rest on him having given it a chance. This would have been a day to relax, get some prep work done to have enough done for this day and the next, so he could attend the celebrations when the Monsters were going to make their new village's foundation official. But instead, she was being so eager to have him attend 'the cause'. After sitting there for a few minutes and blankly staring at the half-closed door, he got up. Like hell was he going to shower for these people, he just put on his clothes for the day, made sure to have his gun on him - it was stupid to walk around in an Orcish neighbourhood without a gun - and his cell phone and wallet.

His mother was being very strange. And it was so early at that, the sun wasn't even really rising yet. They took public transport to a far-out Orcish district, the one where these POB people always rallied at. The closer they got, the more decrepit and empty the buildings got, the more unsure he felt about anything and the higher the percentage of Orcs got that they came across. Even among them, their skin got darker, the closer they were to their destination. Eventually they were stopped by a few acquaintances of Mums, most of them grown women with their sons about his age. "* Why'd you bring dis weak ass boy?", asked a pitch black Orc, half a head taller than him. This stuff that humans - as if he didn't know better - Elves - put out there about all people being the same was complete bull. Even completely disregarding humans or anything else. Even among different Orc breeds, there were obvious, tangible differences. People like this guy right here - people from the jungle, south of the desert, were brutes that got at people's throats over the slightest provocation and he had barely ever seen a single one in person, who could talk properly in his life. He stood exactly opposite to the kind of people that got offended over any sort of disagreement, but getting lumped together with people like him really did feel pretty insulting to the young Half-Orc. If this was what humans had to go by and what they had to put up with, who could blame them for wanting Orcs gone? If he was a full-fledged human, he'd want them all hanging as well. In fact, when behind the veil of anonymity, he was one of the people calling for that himself.

They went the rest of the way together. It was a lot safer to walk in a bigger group. It intimidated possible muggers. They had to walk quite a bit, until they entered a large junk yard, a wide field within which was cleared out from piles of junk and filled with a large crowd of Orcs. Atop a makeshift platform, made by stacking a few containers together and using wooden boards as ramps to climb them, stood the man in question a pitch-Black Orc, almost as large as Mawab K'Tenga himself, with one of his tusks broken from a past fight and dressed in real furs of wild beasts from the Orc Lands. Behind the platform was...something. It had the shape of another goods container, but it was about as big as an apartment building laid down on a side and covered by a sufficiently large cloth to keep everything out of sight. Ugolo K'Tenga stretched out his arms and hailed his congregation of protestors, activists...thugs. And Mesut was one of them right now. He just wanted to get out of here. Whatever they were up to, he didn't want any part of this, but he couldn't just leave Mum here. The leader raised a rifle in the air with one hand and roared as his kind of greeting. The horde around him, even his own people, did the same, some jumped around in place like monkeys and they continued until Ugolo gestured them to settle down, before he had his word. "* I had promised, that we will not give those Monsters peace, until we have had our justice! Today is the day, that I keep my promise! I found a friend, who showed me, that we should not hold back, and called in old favours to help arrange for what we might need to overcome all fears that some might have! Greet Spearman Orion!"

Accompanied by the roars and cheers that this drew, someone trotted up the ramp onto the platform. He walked on four hoofed legs, was covered in brown fur all over, above the torso of a horse, he had a bare human chest, but off it's shoulders hung something akin to the head of a horse. As the title implied, he was here with a handcrafted spear that was so crude and simple, it could have been made by a caveman. "* Hear me, people!", Ugolo called out to them after a short conversation with the centaur. "* Some of you have come here from far away, you were promised big, comfortable homes, protection, and defenseless Shahib for the taking! And then those Monsters came up here, and took it from you! They have an inherent advantage in life that is going to keep the tusked man down, just like how the Shahib do! I know that some of you are afraid. 'The baphomet is real', I hear. 'The Horned King came back to life', I hear. All I hear is that you do not have the tools to meet a new challenge! So what if the horned king is real? Are you going to sit in your homes, and wait until some spoiled, point-eared Archon gets off their comfy chair and gives you permission to act? Or are you going to take justice whenever you have an opportunity to do so? Even in the age-old tales, the horned king was bested. And our forefathers had no assault rifles, or rocket launchers! They could take him down - a mythical creature - with something that is very, very real!"

By the time he was done, he was screaming every word, and when he finished, a troop of climbed up the enormous veiled object to work together with a few on the ground to get the veil removed. And Mesut was shocked beyond belief to see what it was. Oh god, how? How did they get these things here? The noises from within what proved to be two giant cages, came from behemoths, giant creatures from deep within the Orc lands. They had thick bristles of brown fur, that were known to be a lot tougher than they looked, and together with their skin, they were hard enough that no spear or sword could inflict any wounds too easily. The bottom of their front side was a mouth all the way from left to right, and above it, as tall as the rest of their body, each one had an enormous dome made of solid ivory. The sight of an army of Orcs seemed to distress one of them, and it jumped up to stand on it's hind legs for a brief moment, as far as the cage allowed it to, and roared back at the noisy masses. "* I give you the kingbreakers!", the leader atop the containers continued. "* Those of you who grew up without knowing the tales, to whom the reason was left to be forgotten, why they have that name, it was these beasts that our forefathers used to take down the horned king in times that are now legends! And they will take down a horned king once more! As you can see, there is nothing to fear! The white one denied us justice, so we will not give him peace! And on this morning, we march to their home. By dusk, we will have taken it!" He raised the hand that wasn't holding a firearm in the air and clenched it to a first, before he started chanting. "* We fight for victory!"

The horde around him joined in, a lot of which, including his own mother, raising their fists as well and repeated after him. "* We fight for victory!"

Ugolo continued with his other chant. "* We can only lose our chains!"

And the crowd repeated after him. "* We can only lose our chains!"

"* We fight for victory!", he repeated.

"* We fight for victory!"

"* We can only lose our chains!"

"* We can only lose our chains!" This man was rallying them to lead an attack on a village of civilians, and all these people were willingly or unwillingly getting swept up in this! This was crazy. What were they doing? He couldn't just stand by here, let alone join them in this. Or allow his mother to. As inconspicuously as he could, he picked out his phone, knelt down between the screaming and chanting masses and turned on his video camera, before walking away to get into an angle where people weren't going to see him too easily, so he could film the behemoths that were now being fed. He had spent enough time keeping a close eye on things that were really happening, to know that the press would black this out and pretend it wasn't happening, at least until it was too late. He needed footage, he needed people - at least in a certain place - to understand that this was really happening. When he was done having enough footage of the giant creatures in cages and the not so giant creatures filling out the wide area that was surrounded by piles of junk, he saved it. This was risky enough, but he couldn't take the chance and go around posting this stuff here and now and writing something up to describe what was happening. Besides, there was something that had priority. He had to keep track of his mother and get her out of there somehow. No-one was keeping him from walking around here. Having tusks, even short ones, got you a certain trust from these people. It was more that she was here by her own will.

He tried grabbing her by the arm that was raised, to get her attention. When he did, she faced him, at first without a word. When she was about to say something, he made sure to interrupt her. "* Let's go home!" He was waiting to interrupt her on purpose, in hopes that it would get her to comply.

"* Why are you swimming against the stream like that? Come on, join in!" She returned the gesture, grabbed his wrist and raised it in the air. He didn't know what that was supposed to accomplish, and as alluring as the roars and distant drums were, this wasn't just madness, this was borderline suicidal. He waited until she started giving in, dropped his arm as soon as he could, looked her in the eyes and shook his head. He had to be more strict about this. He didn't say anything any more, turned around and made for the exit. There were still Orcs in torn clothes pouring in to partake in this monkey business. Whatever was driving them, it was all way too savage and short-sighted for this monkey. He needed to get out of here, and he had to take his mother with him. He wasn't even half-way around the corner, when Mum was already trying to pull him back. "* Why are you running away? You just as weak as your daddy!" Even she wasn't talking properly any more.

He wrestled his arm out of her grip, made sure that there was no-one too close to give them any attention and snapped at her. "* Running away from what? An assault? Best case scenario we're guilty of mass murder? No, we've got to stay away from this!"

She wasn't going to back down so easily. Whenever he freed himself and marched a few metres further, she followed and tried to pull him back as fiercely as he rarely ever saw her. "* Stay away? We can finally fight back against them Monsters!"

He was angry enough to lose control and shouted back at her. "* When did this 'just want a home' argument stop applying? It was okay to justify those..." He caught himself just in time to not finish his sentence. Savages? Animals? Things? Whatever would have slipped off his tongue would have made it all worse. She was staring at him, and he couldn't tell what with. Anger? Confusion? "* They're really right, aren't they?" She snapped out of this stare, when he continued. "* The humans are right about us. You can't think outside of this, can you? You really are that violent, aren't you? This is all just looking for reasons to attack someone. And the same rules you use for that, suddenly don't apply when it's reversed."

She was about to scold him for being as disrespectful as this. "* You stop using these human words!"

He had no nerve for this. He just moved on, made sure she stayed with him and made for the station. She dropped her hysterical behaviour, when they were waiting at the station, and he showed no signs of weakness. They were going to go home. They were going to have no part in this. He had to be strong and bring her home safely. He was near tears over the fear of what might happen if he let her stay with these jungle Orcs. Every time he had to deal with anything Orc-related, he was more and more convinced anything civilized about him as a person was just his human side shining through. Why did this have to happen to him? He didn't choose to be an Orc. He couldn't change anything about what he was. He couldn't choose where things started, he could only choose where they would go from there. He started browsing on his phone, took the footage he had recorded and headed to the one place where he was sure to have someone's ear. The place where dissidents - mostly human dissidents - from all over the world congregated to monitor and influence politics. This was too urgent to be considerate, he had to cross-post and it, even with it's own thread and explain what he had heard and seen. He had to do what he could about this. He could go there himself to better warn them, but with an army of hostile Orcs heading straight for them, what reason did the Monsters there have to trust him? That was just putting himself in danger. Besides, if he did go there, and someone saw or god forbid, took pictures of him being there when the Monsters knew, he was a goner.

He could think of something he could do from here. The one that organized all those Monsters' applications, lizard-sensei. Or as he knew her by now, Alphys. She had exchanged numbers with him, at least if it really was her number. Even if it wasn't, a chance at warning them was a chance at warning them. He sent her two text messages. When no response came, even when they were walking home, he gave her a ring. The messages contained the address to one of the threads he made, as well as one of the corresponding posts in the Monsters generals. He thought about watching them from afar, but with how Mum was so intent in working for their 'cause', he couldn't risk her running off to join them after all, which was there, if she was given the chance to see them march to the Monsters' village. Even right now, she was getting curious and asking if he was 'snitching' on them. He just didn't answer. As long as she was here with him and by extension, on the way home, she was safe, and what did he care about these others? A large rabble of Orcs with no regard for the law, and willing to march in a campaign with intent to commit mass slaughter? Good riddance if he could do something about that.

* * *

She came to regret having given that guy her number. At least in the moment that he called. It was only after she understood what was going on, that she came to be thankful that she had. She was sleeping when her phone rang, and had a rough awakening. It had been a pretty long night that involved helping all the workers double-check if the houses' wiring and setup of the electric and telephone inlets was in order for the next day, when it had to be foolproof and then going back to the lab so she could drop herself in her nice old comfy bed, and when she gave her phone a look to check the time, it appeared that she had only had three hours of sleep. Based on what the text messages said that came with it, it appeared to be pretty urgent, so her plan in the beginning was to go downstairs, get on the computer, check what it was about, see that it was nothing and then go back to bed. She thought it was nothing. She hoped it was nothing.

It wasn't nothing. A cold shadow slowly crawled down her back when she headed to the linked threads to see what was up. It contained footage of giant creatures from several, close-together angles, as well as shots of a mass of people cheering and making displays of dominance, while an Orc in very primitive clothing stood far above, shouting chants and simple slogans that were repeated by the people below. The poster said he couldn't follow them or come here himself out of risk of his identity coming too far out in the open. Keeping it open enough that people could use the data that came with pictures taken by a cell phone to find the identity of it's owner was one thing, Orcs didn't bother with this kind of stuff, but him getting seen here was something else entirely. It didn't take her long to figure the person was probably Mesut himself, helping them from hiding. Fair enough, she had to be thankful that he was helping at all. The other people in the threads were using all manner of tricks to determine whether the footage was real, but most that tried to find telltales of it being fake admitted to failing. What this meant was that this was certainly footage of two caged 'behemoths' as he called them, taken in Enkate City.

Worse yet, people who swept across news sites confirmed that there was a complete media blackout. More and more private videos were popping up of those Orcs marching with those giant creatures towards the suburban areas, yet every single news source put up nothing about it. They didn't even 'chirp' a word about it, the only one that did, was some fringe blog that denounced talking about this as a conspiracy theory. She transferred as much as she could onto her phone, and then ran off without even bothering with Undyne or the computer. All this was secondary, she had to get this to Asgore first. She rushed to the elevator and tried calling him. She had to repeat twice that this was urgent and really happening, and by the time she was in his house and knocking on his bedroom door, the king was already in his armour when he opened it. She rushed right past him and placed her transformed phone on the table so he could look at the screen. Asgore didn't expect what she was talking about to really be what she called it, but it was. When he examined the videos, what was shown really were behemoths. Two of them. This was dire, very dire. An army of Orcs - presumably equipped with firearms - and with two behemoths. The firearms didn't do much to him, he could just keep the Temmies' shielding device on him and take them out from a distance, but the behemoths were something else. Was this it? Was his death always coming, either by the hand of whatever human child was determined enough in the Underground, or by the same means as his father's had come?

If this wasn't successfully dealt with, it could mean the end of all the Monsters that were to live on the surface. If they were unlucky, the end of all of New Home, or of all Monsters entirely. He was going through options. Grim options. If any plan failed, the child could turn back time and nudge him in the right direction, but if he didn't have any options, he might have had to do some things he didn't want to. Maybe retreating? Evacuating the surface, fleeing to the Underground? They would need something to ward off the Orcs though, like a second barrier - one that went both ways. But for that he would have to do the unspeakable. Several unspeakable things. No, it took three behemoths to best his father, and if Asgore played things right, he would not have a son to look out for in the heat of battle, like his father had. Facing off against two and an army of infantry had to be possible somehow. He couldn't drag any other monsters into this though. They would just be gunned down. When the two of them hurried outside, Alphys making phone call after phone call to try and get anyone who was in the village rallied together or to come to the Underground, Asgore stopped at the exit. He stopped because at the cliff just outside stood two Temmies, that were staring down in the very direction that Alphys pointed to, saying that this was where they would come from. When she noticed that he had stopped, the terrified lizard came back. One of the Temmies was vibrating. "* TEM scaerd..." Without asking or wondering how they knew what was coming to begin with, she grabbed them both and carried them inside, before she followed Asgore down the cliff.

He could ask Sans for help. He was capable of a lot. But could he dodge whole flurries of bullets? He had no idea how fast Sans could go, but that was doubtful to him. And no Monster that he knew of had an amount of LOVE like himself. If Asgore got hit, he was the one that was most resilient. It had to be one Monster though because of those firearms. Damn, why didn't the Temmies give him more than one of those TEM BLOCKs? As word got around, Monsters without combat training fled to the Underground, while the others used magic to help climb to the rooftops in the corner of the unnamed village. Asgore took a deep breath. He had to try it. Before he put the lives of anyone other than himself at risk, or contemplated doing something horrible to some of the humans here, he had to trust the child's determination and try taking on all of these enemies on his own. Alphys, Frisk, Undyne, Papyrus, Sans...even Toriel, they all called for him to come back, while Asgore decidedly marched onward, out onto what was left of the surrounding fields after all the new houses were built. Far out enough for no-one to be in danger, even if a possible fight led them a little closer, he stopped. He smelled the wind carry the scents that came with nearby farmland and felt it brush through his fur. It was broad daylight, and there were barely any clouds. And if what Alphys said about the 'blackout' was true, any press would pretend that anything that happened here, never did, so the only advantage he could figure for them attacking at this time and not at night, was that they wanted to catch every detail when they slaughtered the people in the village. They enjoyed it and wanted to savour it. And soon enough, they came. Led by one slightly taller Orc with a broken tusk, came droves of them, and with them, the creatures that trampled the earth they trod upon. They were just like he remembered. Just what they looked like when he had nightmares. Enormous. Big enough to brush trucks aside if they needed to, with domes of solid horn on their heads and walking on four mighty stumps for feet. They had harnesses strapped onto them that allowed to secure some Orcs to safely ride on them, and the ones that rode it were holding ropes together with a few others on the ground to guide these creatures.

This new leader, this 'Ugolo' as Alphys called him seemed weaker than Mawab. He kept a large distance to Asgore and none of the other savages dared to tread closer than he did, not even the ones riding the beasts. Another reason he figured this Orc was weaker than his brother, was that he didn't rely on his voice. He pulled forth a megaphone, but tried to make an intimidating impression with it. "* So this is all you have to muster. Only one man had the guts to come here! Are you really all that Monsters have to offer? Can everyone else only hide behind the back of your baphomet?"

Asgore had no need for gadgets to enhance his voice, they could very well hear him from here. "* We mean no war, there is no reason for you to press us into one!"

As expected, Ugolo laughed at this. "* You think we don't know what you did to us? To my brother? You will pay." Everything after that was a chant that the hordes behind him repeated. "* If there is no justice..."

"* If there is no justice..."

"* ...there will be no peace!"

"* ...there will be no peace!"

"* We can only lose our chains!"

"* We can only lose our chains!"

"* We fight for Victory!"

"* We fight for Victory!"

Offering to spare them appeared hopeless as well. They saw themselves in a position of power, and they probably weren't wrong about that. If all bets were off, there was nothing stopping their infantry from simply running past the king, while the behemoths distracted him. The Orcs stood in place, and repeated their chants - the same three slogans - over and over. He was already hearing the countdown of his life in them, when suddenly something 'fell down', right at him, brushed his hand in it's fall and landed on his right paw. When he picked it up, it was a set of headphones with a microphone. Specifically made to fit a grown, horned boss monster, with the earpieces arranged in a way to safely wrap them under his floppy ears. When he put it on, with the Orcs still chanting in the background and probably waiting for the king to make his move, he heard voices. Familiar voices. "* r3d TEM oen heer! faes swap compleet, eberywun repoot!"

"* bloo TEM h33r!"

It was a voice communication channel between Temmies. And he could only guess what a 'phase swap' was supposed to be. He tried to answer through the microphone after he adjusted it to be in front of his mouth. "* Asgore...here?"

"* h0i Azgo! gr1n TEM arr0ivd!"

"* yalloo TEM tek uff!"

Far above his head, the grotesque, sandwich-laden shoe box that was TEM fortress appeared out of nowhere. Squadrons of flying Temmies in power suits swirled the surrounding skies in the colours they announced themselves in. "* blak TEM tek off!"

"* crimsen TEM arr0ivd!"

"* Wait..." He interrupted. "* You have two red teams?"

"* wat? noes! oen is crimsen!"

The chants of the enemy died off, when more and more were getting confused and unsettled by what was happening above them.

"* u r in eyessolashun fild! can no leaf nao!" This was said through the voice communication, but it was also spoken through a loudspeaker from above. The face of General Temmie, complete with blue shirt and helmet appeared on the screen of the slightly lowered flying fortress. "* u wan 2 fite or d0i! u can haf fite or d0i!" Of course, slow in comprehension as Orcs were, a few opened fire at the fortress, at Asgore and at the flying Temmies, and with the results he expected. Namely none. General Temmie put on a wide open smile that came with a wink. This probably was her kind of suppressed laughter. "* Yaya, ur gunz r ueslezz! u tinnk u invinsibel wid gunz! Butt mezz widd M0nst4z iz mezz widd TEM! Nao u r d0i!"

The Orcs' increasingly desperate leader raised his hand, holding an assault rifle sideways with it, and gestured them to attack. Their infantry only bothered with the Temmies, but they were directing one of the behemoths at Asgore. He had to remember everything he knew about open combat, because here, he could not afford to make any mistake. He memorized every detail of the surrounding area, summoned his trident and got ready to obstruct his attackers with rock formations summoned out of the ground, while he ran to the side, stopped, summoned up a little platform of earth and and pushed himself away by shifting around the earth below it. The troop that was holding the other beast, was losing control of it because of the green and yellow Temmies that were still swirling in circles around it's head, drawing shining lines after them in the respective colour of each one's suit. When the one that wasn't free was charging at the king, he made sure to conjure a pillar of flame straight into one of it's barely exposed eyes, which stopped it in it's tracks and gave him time to gain some distance by pushing his platform further away.

Eventually, the Temmies had enough of playing with the Orcs' infantry, because they were already flying so low, the rioters were striking at them with their guns rather than firing. A weapon system of sorts was swiveling out of the blue and red armours to both sides each, and at the ends were rods that glowed with visible heat and in the colours of their armour. Their arms and legs extended to gain roughly humanoid proportions and with their shining rods, they cut through the helpless footsoldiers like through butter with a knife. Only when they cut their way through two whole rows of them did Ugolo realize the gravity of their situation and wanted to make straight for Asgore, before a blue-suited Temmie flew by and burned and sliced him right into three bits. The members of Black Tem were mostly flying around above and assisting both groups of teams randomly. The king was far from done with the Behemoth though. The handlers were already readjusting it to make it charge at him again. What little of a break the king had, he used to summon rocks and shoot them straight at the heads of the four Orcs that were holding ropes at the side that they were turning the beast in, which threw three of them back, one of which at least got knocked out. Two teams of Temmies were only flying around the stray beast. "* big broon herry iz still h33r!" At least he hoped they were referring to a 'big brown hairy' and not him. When blue Tem, red Tem and possibly crimson Tem were done with about a fifth of the rabble, the rest was already screaming and running away, sometimes trampling each other to climb higher in hopes of escaping, but something was stopping them. Asgore didn't have much time to watch closely between keeping a distance to the behemoth that was still under enemy control and taking out it's handlers, but it seemed like the Orcs simply couldn't run away. An invisible 'wall' was keeping them here. It was like General Temmie had said: It was fight or die for them.

Blue Tem waited until they sliced and burned their way with their searing blades all the way to one end of this limited battleground, before turning around and speaking up in the voice comm. "* Tem 2 deel wit bayheemoth! Activaet Honk Driv!"

Others, one after the other, repeated the same thing. "* Honk driv activaet!", until someone from every team had said so. The ones that did, judging from the timing being in sync with them saying it, tapped a round component on the 'chest' of their armour with their right front paw. Each one of these circles, when tapped, started spinning and pulsating with energy and emitting yet another bright light in their respective colour, and the Temmies resumed the battle with their circles still shining. Even the black ones' Honk Drives seemed to emit some sort of 'black' light. Asgore in the mean time, struggled to manage with everything. Shifting out of harms way a third time meant going straight past the remaining Orcs. He made sure to have the direction right and set to moving, and even though he tried to avoid as many as possible, three Orcs turned around to attack him. The first one he could easily dispatch with three instantaneous spikes that shot up from the ground. He rammed the middle spike of his trident into the skull of the second one through his right eye, killing him instantly, but kept the trident in his hand to ram the broader back side right onto the third one to knock her off balance and get himself an opportunity to jump off to press down the arm she held her firearm with, with one hand, and covering her face with his other one to first shroud her face in flames, then make the fire fill her air tubes and then her lungs to suffocate her from inside. Within two seconds, she was defenseless enough for him to tear the released rifle out of her hand and pull the trigger to fill her body and the bodies of at least three more attackers with bullets before it's ammunition ran out. The moment he had a moment to do so, he restored his slab and focused on avoiding the behemoth once again and taking out more of the handlers for good. He used the terrified Orcs and the timing of his own earth slabs crashing against the 'walls' to estimate where the edges of the area he could move in were, to help better navigate around the Orcs on the ground. Eventually, after he encased a few of the rocks he threw at them with fire, it appeared like the handlers of one entire side of the beast were all dead, so if they wanted to keep targeting him, they needed him to have their creature's attention, or turn it the other way round entirely. What little a break he had, he used to assist the Temmies on the ground by driving earth spikes through any Orcs that came his way. Once he sped all the way to the 'opposite' end of the 'arena', he used his time for a longer cast, and raised the earth around some of the corpses, to create a ball of hardened earth that the corpses were bound into and launched it into the side of the creature that was made to chase him with his full might. But even launching a large, blunt rock like this one onto it had little effect.

Sure, it was startled, and probably had a scratch or a wound under it's thick coat, but nothing of real scale, nothing you would expect from as big an attack as this, and it got him it's attention. He saw an opportunity to get out of the predicament though. He was in one corner, in an adjacent one was the behemoth that was distracted by the Temmies who were - according to what they were saying to each other - waiting for their 'honk drives' to charge. And in the one opposite of that, was the creature that was now turning around to charge at him. Asgore hopped up, renewed his platform, kept a close eye on when the behemoth was going to set off to run after him, and slid roughly to the other corner in the right moment for it to arrive in the same corner as the distracted one. Sure, it didn't crash into it like he hoped it would, but he needed to redirect some of his own attention to fending off the Orcs this faced him with, for one of which he used this momentum to pierce her neck with the pointy end of his trident and smash her body into the next one that was trying to strike for him, before letting go of and dispelling his trident to leap off the rock and throw incoming assailants back with summoned waves of earth and fire. He was relieved to see his original plan at least come into fruition in so far, that the behemoths were distracting each other, which left him with more time to help the blue and red Temmies.

"* Honk driv full chaergd! Tem 4 Chen Atak!", it sounded through the headphones. Two of the Temmies, a yellow and a green one flew to the side opposite to that of the behemoths, and stretched out their paws. In the palms of them, an insane surge of power collected itself, and it didn't stop soon enough to allow Asgore to watch it, before being faced with more incoming savages to burn down or impale. For the time being, he focused on taking out any Orcs that got too close and reassured himself multiple times that there were none behind him. One got up after playing dead, but he stepped back and the coward was impaled faster than he had gotten up. Once Asgore was safe and the remaining groups of stragglers were being chased down and cut apart by the Temmies on the ground whenever they got too far away, he saw what the airborne ones were doing. The ones in the corner were still charging the energy surges in their front paws, while the others gathered around each behemoth, isolated them from each other with the help of the slightly different toned 'crimson' Tem, and then followed a strict routine of overcharging their shields to the point where you could see it's spherical shape around them, and then first ramming onto each beast in a group to break their defenses in one direction, while the others swooped in from the other side to then knock them off their legs. In quick and repeated succession, they kept the creatures off their feet, until the Temmies in the corners shouted: "* Lehzur chargd!". When they did, the rest of all six teams dashed out of the way at once, and the two in the corner fired a gigantic, all-encompassing ray of light that completely engulfed both behemoths as well as all the Orcs around them and between them and the Temmies. It was so loud and blinding, all other fighting stopped, people on both sides were either watching it, or trying to make sense of what was happening. Once the beams were turning silent and faded out, all that was left in their path was a trail of charcoal and ash. The behemoths were dead and gone. From then on in, everything went a lot more smoothly. Asgore and the Temmies on the ground continued to finish off every last one of the Orcs here. He asked if they thought sparing the rest was a good idea, but the Temmies - as he knew them - insisted on not allowing for any loose ends. Every last one of them had to die. When Asgore, now completely smeared in Orc blood, as were almost all of the blue and red Temmies, tore the front of his trident out of the last one that was there, a female who's blind rage and mindlessness shun through even in death, and let her sag to the ground, the leader of red Tem concluded: "* ennemiy defeet3d. Gud gaem. Azgo step in small0r isolashun fild!"

A five metre wide square lit up on the ground, and even after asking again, the Temmie urged him to step into it. Within a few seconds upon standing in the centre of the shining glyph, it's light faded, and so did all the Temmies and Orcish bodies. He found himself in the same place that he was, only that everything was gone. The only giveaway that anything really happened, was that he was still catching his breath and and there was still blood splattered all across his armour and fur. "* Dad!" When he turned around, many had followed him. To his relief, the furthest out, and the closest to him. The child and Toriel, the former of which was rushing to him with a flattering relief in his eyes.

He pushed the boy back when he was about to reach Asgore. "* Wouldn't be very healthy to touch all this!" He drew his finger along all that was smeared. Who knew what diseases these Orcs were carrying. A Monster would not be affected, but a human would. Frisk accompanied him when he went back to meet the - surprisingly not really malcontented queen. When the two of them were in his field of vision, he smiled at both of them. "* Thank you for coming here. Both of you."

"* But Dad, wait..." When the child went on, Undyne and the others came closer. "* ...the Orcs were coming, and then you all just...disappeared. What happened?"

He suspected that these kinds of questions would come up. He didn't expect everyone to follow him like this, and he didn't expect it so soon. He had to play it off in a way that would signal his intent not to answer it. "* Sometimes, we have friends we are not aware of. Life is not always as dark as it seems, and not all hidden forces are evil." With this threat banished once more, nothing was stopping them from establishing their village. They were facing challenges all the way to the last day before the founding. But that day, was now only one night away. None of them knew exactly what happened, but as Asgore walked back through the village and up the cliff, more and more Monsters and humans came out of hiding and stared at the victorious king with awe, and he knew that they had a feeling of what happened. They had a feeling that they had won.


	33. The Eponymous Sun

.

A Doctor's duty

Chapter 22

The Eponymous Sun

* * *

The Doctor finished up by adding the last point onto the black board. "Aaand that is why we more commonly refer to Mertaurs as 'Aarons'. Now then, we're done with Mertaurs, next up are their traitorous relatives, who stayed up here after they betrayed and banished the rest of us in the Underground. Did I mention that they're traitors?" It was only when he was finishing up his crude sketch of a centaur, that he started to notice something being off. Wingdings took a step back and examined all the corners of the black board he had been drawing and writing on in the past week.

"what's up?", Sans asked.

The Doctor turned around to look back at the three curious Monsters sitting in the chairs of a class room of the Queen's school. The walls were lined up with stuck-on makeshift infographics about some fifth-grade literature subject. The blinds on the window were up, so there was a possibility of someone being at the window and maybe the three of them playing a trick on him. Doctor Gaster headed to the window to check, but everything seemed normal. There was nobody crouching under the window outside, they were all on their own. There wasn't even anyone on the school yard behind the window, the entire area was empty. There were a few humans walking past on the walk way on the opposite side of the road, but they were way too far away. At once, he raised his voice. "None of you are noticing it, are you?" The reactions he got displayed a complete lack of understanding or awareness of anything having changed, yet while he walked back to his original spot just behind the teacher's desk, Wingdings took his time to move very slowly and examine every corner of the room and try to feel, to listen. When he was at his destination, he closed his eyes. A silence filled the room with everyone intently waiting for him to tell them what was going on. "There is narration."

The skeletons and Alphys exchanged glances of confusion. "What do you mean?"

It was too late. The Doctor's mind was already rushing. It probably wasn't sensible to tell them about stories, narration or chapters... "Oh shut up!", Wingdings shouted. "Give me a moment to think." He had to recall all the events he had noted down. Things were different. That meant something significant was looming. He had noted down many particularly risky points in time, but there was only one that was going to occur during his potential teachings, where there would be narration. He quickly pulled his right sleeve all the way back to check one of the further right watches. Upon seeing that his suspicion was right, he cursed: "By Asriel's golden beard! The wind serpent!" It was time. One of the less defined events, the natural flow of which could bear casualties, unless he intervened. Several of his 'assistants' were already getting up and asking what this was about, but there was no time for in-depth explanation. "Time is catching up! This is why I brought this!" He reached under his table and pulled up the hand-sized black contraption that could project and spread out the CATS. "There is going to be an attack on this village, and I need to prevent it from leaving any lasting damages." He presented his weapon to the three of them, which Alphys and Papyrus hadn't seen in action yet.

Sans had seen it though. "you're gonna prevent damages with explosions?", he asked. Oh little Sans, always talking back when he knew there was no way of dissuading him. "wanna tell us what this is all about?"

It probably really was better to tell them what was going on. "All right, all right.", he continued, while he picked up his tool box in case anything went wrong and four pairs of sunglasses to put on and pass around for everyone else while they were on the way. He led them out of the classroom, through the empty hallways and out to the stair case at the back entrance of the school. "Time isn't two-dimensional, it's three dimensional. If you're watching the universe from outside, time becomes meaningless. If you can look inside to one point in time, you can make minor adjustments and see whatever timeline you like." As soon as he could, he took any turn necessary to head for the big square that lay at the centre of both villages, the one that always lay at the centre, even before Monsters first arrived here. "Different timelines created through time travel or determination are just different points on two additional dimensions that even a lot of advanced civilizations aren't aware of or have no access to. It's the reason why Temmies can easily travel backwards and forwards along stopped, erased and newly created timelines, while I can't." Another thing that made all this all the more out of place to the others, was that he was the only one as agitated was around here. All the people they passed were just minding their own business on what they thought to be a perfectly nice day outside. "I had a lot of time to observe you and the following years in a lot of time lines, and I noted down...WEIDENBLUM!" His eye-holes narrowed down and his voice briefly took on a very grim tone, but it was lowered enough that his anger wasn't loud enough to be heard by his Elfish neighbour Edgar Weidenblum, who was hasting in the opposite direction. Upon seeing Wingdings though, he greeted him.

Edgar smiled, waved at them and greeted Wingdings. "Hello Wayne? What are you up to on a nice day like this?"

The Doctor usually pretended to be on nice terms and a friendly neighbour. He even visited him for tea on Saturday. But seeing this man play innocent like this infuriated him so much, he lost control and confronted him with honesty. "You know damn well, what's going on." This despicable Elf was already pulling together, probably in instinctive preparation to take offense or cry persecution. If Wingdings said the wrong thing, he probably would have, so he had to stick to what was undeniable. "You rent a house and install a bunker with lightning protection and several conductors all around it, just months before today? Why lightning protection exactly? That's quite the specific choice, isn't it?"

His neighbour had the gall to play innocent. "I don't know what you mean, my Archon had a vision that I'll need it. I'm just having a nice walk outside."

"Yes, a 'vision', of course, what a massively convenient coincidence. And that walk looked a bit hasty, and straight to your house...with the bunker."

The Elf frowned and started to move on. "I have no time for this."

There was no point in further engaging him, an Elf never showed their true colours unless they were sure they could do it without recourse. They were getting closer anyway, and he was running out of time. When the plane came, he raised his hand and pointed at it. "You see this?" While they were all pacing along to their destination, they glanced upwards to see it fly by with a particularly low altitude and draw a thin line of clouds after it. The moment it reached the village though, the line it drew stopped, while the plane continued to pass by. "That's the plane that's directing it. The line behind it, that stuff is bait. It's passing this exact village and flying so low on purpose. The substance is why."

"Doesn't that sound a little reaching? Isn't that just exhaust?" Oh Alphys. Even after all this, she was still so naive.

"People do bad things and lie, welcome to the real world. A plane flies across the ocean, drawing a trail of a visible, distinct substance - thicker than a normal exhaust line - along it's path, which is nothing and perfectly harmless, and a giant, flying, electric lizard that otherwise never leaves the main land of their home, just so happens to follow it all the way from the south Merkantilian continent, across the ocean, right here to this exact place of all the possible places, the one village where there are Monsters, it has nothing to do with the plane it was chasing whatsoever and it's all just an extremely inconvenient coincidence. Of course, that sounds perfectly reasonable. With that mentality, no wonder the Elves got as far as they got!" Even when the plane was passing, most of the villagers didn't seem to suspect a thing. It was a perfectly peaceful, moderately cloudy but still sunny day, where everyone was either out of the house or relaxing. And nobody except the Doctor and his neighbour had an idea of what was coming for them.

Before Alphys could get to asking what a wind serpent even was, they already heard the shrill screech, that must have been audible from all around. The Doctor only stopped and put down his toolbox when they got to the centre of the square. "What - what is this?" Soon, the source of the scream followed. On massive, feathered wings that could cover a third of all the houses alone, an enormous creature came to loom above them not far below the clouds. Wingdings used a modified phone to work as fast as he could to get a rough estimate on how big that thing was, and how far away it was, so he could adjust length and radius on his CATS. The creature was covered in red scales, curved claws hung out at the front ends of it's wings and when it screamed again, it opened up it's thin but lengthy jaws, that had two fangs at the end of them that were almost twice as long as it's jaws were tall. Blue flashes of electricity flickered up around it, and with a delay, Alphys could hear the thunder of all the bolts this giant lizard was emitting. Any people around them started panicking and fleeing into houses or less open roads.

The serpent was probably reorienting itself in it's new surroundings, after having lost track of the bait. It was flying in circles and eights, keeping momentum and causing ear-shattering thunders, every time it passed through a cloud. At some point, while Alphys, helpless and confused over what this insane old skeleton was up to, cowered together under bibbers, a really strong bolt shot along the length of the monster's red scales and struck down onto the ground, felling and lighting a tree on fire as they would later discover. When the Doctor was content, he opened the contraption and fit it onto his hand. The red and already glowing arcane crystal was carved precisely to fit into the holes in his hands, and the moment he put it on and then closed and fastened it's security checks, red lines of solid light shot out of small holes at both sides. They followed mostly a straight path, split up, some branching out diagonally for a short stretch, then getting back on course, others splitting off to form circles and cones. Between them, pink and purple veils of light formed and followed the pattern that the lines defined for them, until the entire spectacle formed some kind of weightless, spectral beam weapon that was as long as Wingdings was tall. "Behold! The CATS! Now, Papyrus..."

Papyrus looked very unsure about this and was probably terrified on the inside, but that didn't matter. He was brave when it was necessary and trusted the Doctor. He picked up on Wingdings' militaristic tone and - half in jest - saluted to him. "AWAITING ORDERS!"

Dr. Gaster was happy to see that he could count on him, while Alphys was half-way on her knees and trembling. "I'm going to need you to get it's attention. The higher it is while you do, the better."

The younger skeleton nodded. Where Papyrus would have his irises if he was a human, two blinding, ring-shaped and orange lights started flaring up and spinning at an indiscernible speed and smoke started coming out of his eye-sockets. He raised one arm and in front of it, a bone the size of an entire bus formed and roughly followed the directions of his arms. The skeleton took a step back, struck out and with the combined motion of both his arms, torpedoed this giant projectile towards the even bigger creature it was made for. When that happened, Alphys finally gathered the initiative she needed to do anything but crouch together in fear. She got up, grabbed Papyrus by the arm, shook him and shouted: "Stop! This is crazy!" Her struggles were in vain, the bone kept it's course, flew all the way to it's target and crashed into one of the serpent's wings, briefly knocking it out of flight. At once, it's head focused at the square on which the only people left who hadn't already fled were Dr. Gaster, the other two skeletons and Alphys. The shock of hearing the scream that Papyrus' attack got out of it, caused her to freeze up for a moment. When she turned away from the skeleton to look up at the monstrosity, she did so just in time to see it bare it's fangs and roar at them. There was no-one else here, it was with no doubt them who had it's attention. "We've got to get out of here!"

"no!" When she was about to run off, Sans grabbed her and held her in place with unbeatable strength. "he's got a plan!"

She couldn't help but struggle, no matter how futile it was. "Are you crazy? What is he going to do?"

The Doctor was listening, but not moving an inch. He simply stretched out his arm towards the creature, pointing his incorporeal weapon at it, but once the wind serpent had flown it's somersault to gain momentum, it attempted to charge right at them, and the Doctor finally answered her question. "Science!", which was followed by an ear-shattering bang, a thin but distinct white flash of light that shot from the weapon all the way through the length of the creature. And within less than a second's time, it was like her vision specifically of the creature, but nothing around it was first 'squashed', then 'blacked out' by a giant, pitch-black cylindrical object. All winds were redirected towards that thing, and light was being broken, it was the light of day everywhere before, but now, their surroundings were covered in a spectrum of varyingly broken light, as if it was a different time of the day every fifty metres of the village with the area right below the object being shrouded in the darkness of the night.

Under the rumble of this strange, black hole, Sans started grabbing and speeding first Papyrus, then Alphys, and in the end, Dr. Gaster and carrying them behind a few pillars of a public building at the end of the square. "Get down!", the Doctor screamed. A few seconds after that, the object in the sky exploded in an ear-shattering burst of flame, preceded by a pressure wave that everyone could feel. Everyone remained silent until the rumbling that followed the explosion, slowly but surely, settled down. The Doctor sighed. "Phew, one threat dismantled."

"One?", burst out of the surprised lizard.

The Doctor grabbed her by both shoulders in a gesture to make unmistakably clear, that she needed to wrap her head around this. "Of course! Once one pillar, no matter how thin, in the broader framework - such as Mrs.. Wimble, has been taken out, people start becoming the target of relentlessly often and successive coincidental attacks. Seriously, after all you've been through, Chief K'Tenga, a leviathan, two behemoths, countless centaurs, the mayor and a wind serpent, did you seriously think it was over? This is only the point where things start really improving. Soon, we can work to take the fight to the enemy, because thanks to my return, I can prepare to dismantle any proxy that comes for us."

* * *

It was time. The last constructions were wrapped up, and the morning had come, when Monsters could begin moving in. All the village's future inhabitants, gawkers and tourists, both human and Monster, came here to see what Monsters regarded an important step in their history. The roads were cleared out, plants, flowers and grass speed-grown using magic to make it look good for the day. They could replace it with slower and more lasting growth later. The square in the centre of the original village of Farfoot, with the big tiles that reflected the sunlight in a bright yellow, and where all shadows were cast in a calming blue, was renovated as part of the expansion, and it remained the centre of the entire surrounding settlement. There was a smaller one further up among the Monster residencies, in case that it got too much for humans to handle. Most of the people you saw walking around outside were only the visitors that were interested in the ceremony, the festivities and what it all looked like. The Monsters that were moving here - save for Asgore, who was overseeing everything to make sure the ceremony went smoothly and to be present when certain government officials got around to coming here - were all off rushing for their new homes, where the Builvers would hand out every household's keys after assuring themselves that the people that came were the intended new inhabitants.

Undyne and Alphys had secured themselves a pretty damn big house together. It was possible to get one of it's size, because it was situated in a very outside corner of the village and the workers could take advantage of a lot of excess space that resulted from how all the others' residencies were ordered to be. It's exterior had the design of Undyne's old house, the one that was in ruins now, but with over twice the radius from the centre and the height to match it. It was in actuality even a lot larger than it looked from the outside, because it's basement was as wide as the entire thing and had two floors. They had to wait, because the Builvers were across the road and busy going through everything with this fat slob Sam and two other Monsters Undyne didn't know, before they could come over and move on to verifying their identity. When the two of them stood at the door and Undyne was given the key to open and explore the interior, Alphys was following up very slowly, because - predictably - seeing as who she was, she was completely overdoing it and was carrying two large bags and one backpack, all of them stuffed to the brink and that wasn't even counting the equally large bag Undyne had agreed to bringing along. Alphys sighed with relief when they were finally inside and she could drop all the luggage on the floor. "* Phew. Home, sweet home."

"* Look at that!" Undyne paced ahead, without taking her shoes off, to walk around the big room to the left of the entrance. The light brown laminate floor was so wide and empty. "* We can put so much stuff here! The piano, the sofa, maybe we can get one of these really big flat screens the humans have up here and put it right there!" She pointed at the left wall, looking inside from the front door, which consisted mostly of windows. The wall opposite to the front door was a solid wall, but had two windowed sliding doors that led to the - as of yet - empty swimming pool. The house had a little garage, but it's walls were built with extra solid metals to allow Undyne to use it for combat training and target practise. To the right from the front door, a narrow corridor led to several rooms on it's twofold cornered way that ended in the kitchen at the centre of the ground floor, which was connected to the living room and to the dining room through a door each. On the way there were two small rooms, one of them contained a spiral staircase that led to a pretty short second floor, and then the attic, the ceiling of which had it's shape mostly defined by the house's exterior design.

The other one had a straight staircase right along the outside wall, into the basement, the first floor of which was exactly how Alphys liked it. Undyne didn't get why Alphys liked small rooms so much, but judging by how she reacted to what she got, she was absolutely happy. Much different from the ground floor of the royal lab in the Underground, it consisted almost entirely out of narrow corridors and dark, small rooms, only illuminated by one or two lamps. One of them was a predestined alcove that was only there to store manga, of which she planned on collecting a lot, now that she didn't have to rely on a human throwing one away and her to find it, to get her hands on one. In fact, judging from what she was telling her, every single room already had it's exact use planned, and how the different rooms connected to the corridor that led through a spiral to her bedroom, were arranged according to what she tended to do in which order. Which of course meant, the rooms for her computers and the upper lab were the ones closest to the stairs. Another staircase in the basement led to a second floor in the basement, which was dedicated entirely for scientific and engineering purposes, whatever that was going to mean. One bookshelf was already pre-installed when they arrived, and Alphys put her bag down to start filling it with the manga she thought it was necessary to bring here on the very first time they came here. "* Stop!" The captain tried to help, but was soon interrupted, like she was doing something wrong and was supposed to know what that was. When it became apparent enough that she didn't though, Alphys helped her out. "* You can't put a doujin in the manga shelf!" Undyne wasn't sure what doujin was - those manga were all a bit on the slippery side - but Alphys explained the difference later. For the time being, she only reached for the bottom right corner of the shelf, flipped some switch on the inside, and stepped back to watch the shelf shuffle aside and reveal in the wall behind it, another bookshelf. "* We have a separate one for doujins." Alphys fumbled more of these 'doujins' out of her bag, until she was done and pulled another lever that caused the front shelf to move back to where it was. Like they did with the manga, they used unloading all the stuff that Alphys had brought up here as an opportunity to settle down and get comfortable with their new home.

Asgore had himself a little two-storage house built, which was a bit bigger when you saw it from the inside for yourself, rather than just watching him walk inside, because the inside was - much like the hotel they stayed at on their first days here, scaled up for boss monsters. The same went for Toriel's, and there was something about the houses up here that Asgore and Toriel had laid out separately for the Builvers to build, that everybody could see, but nobody dared to mention. They were identical, inside and outside. Toriel got herself a little greenhouse, too, even though anyone who knew her could tell where her attempts at gardening were going to go and Asgore had an assortment of kitchen facilities he was probably never going to properly use either. On top of that, both had a spare boss-monster sized bedroom that remained empty in each one.

The Builvers had been instructed to make the house of Sans and Papyrus exactly like their house in Snowdin and they delivered on that. The Window was barely bigger at all, the logs of it's outside stood out completely between the surrounding houses and not just that. It really was exactly like their house in Snowdin. Same walls, same little window, same wooden toolshed, same balcony, same letterboxes, same little door in the back, same Christmas decorations, they even kept the snow on the roof, even though it was summer.

The streets outside were getting more and more crowded, and it got harder and harder to get anywhere. The construction crews from all over the Underground, everyone who helped work on the village, the Monsters that had gravitated towards the path between ruins and New Home out of the desire to leave the Underground over time, swaths of Monsters from New Home who wanted to witness the ceremony of declaring the expanded village founded and countless tourists from all around the city, even from further away in some cases - everyone was here. As time went on, the crowd was concentrating around the square at the centre of Farfoot village. William had arranged for certain officials to attend to later rectify the status of the Monsters' residences as something separate from the human village, because apparently that allowed to escape a lot of restrictions and taxes they would have been subjected to, if they legally associated themselves with humans, their homes needed to be clearly categorized as 'non-human' to be granted these exemptions. And a few other humans were standing around Asgore on a stage they had set up at the centre of the square. A few curious Temmies were ignoring the perimeter, but the humans humoured them after Asgore assured them that the Temmies were harmless.

Time went on and word got out that it was beginning. The king, clad in armor for the occasion, spread his arms out and began to speak, drawing the attention of the people around away from what else they were doing or who else they were talking to, through the mere force of his voice. "* Citizens of the Underground, denizens of the surface. Welcome. Welcome to our humble new home. This is an important point in our history. Not an overnight full relocation to the surface, but the preparation for the establishment of a foothold, to keep the Underground safe, while still opening up paths to explore the surface. For half a millennium, we were trapped. Confined. Limited to dark and closed-off caves with little sentient life but ourselves! And in the end, rescued by no less than a miracle, undoubtedly made possible by this human..." He waved at Toriel, to come on stage with Frisk, who stood next to Asgore in silence. "* Meet the saviour of my people and the child I will henceforth take care of. Together, we ventured to see the world that would drive a human to come down to our homes and found ourselves in a hostile world. I must admit, for a brief moment, I considered retreating and not coming back up here again, at least for a few more decades or centuries, but with the help of this human's knowledge and expertise..." He signaled William to wave at the audience. "* I came up with a longer way. A more strenuous way, but a way that would make it possible. I acquired the necessary land for us to set foot on today, with the help of a generous businessman, who now struggles to take on the thievishness of a bleeding, broken and self-justifying system and who hence can't be with..." He paused for a moment, because to his surprise, a crew of security guards opened a path, followed by the blond comb-over and striking face of Daniel Victor coming to the stage, who wove at the king, put on one of his 'Bring Back Glory' hats and gave the crowd a double thumbs up. "* He also made our first vacation to a place of human recreation possible, and when bad fortune had us faced with a terrible beast we were lucky to have someone who's strength was aligned to fend off our attacker, and save us from possible disaster." This was Undyne's cue to step forward and join the rest, with the Monster part of the audience clapping their hands a bit louder than when others came along.

"* I was happy to see that no more than a day after I announced plans to see to the creation of what surrounds you now, Monsters from all over the Underground gathered to take part in making it possible themselves. It would not have been possible, and certainly not as fast as this, if it weren't for your hard work and rigorous involvement." There was no way that there was space for all the workers, but at least the coordinators of each respective crew came up. "* Life up here proved complicated, an endless overgrowth of bureaucratic hoops to jump through, just to apply for so much as a chance at preparing ourselves to work in the future, along with an impossible-to-keep deadline, but thanks to the immediate and thorough research and quick understanding of the procedures followed by the tireless organizational efforts on the part of our head of research, the chance at an early shot at this could be taken regardless." This was where Alphys followed. "* And then, meet the man who vowed to do what he can to make himself a name, and prove through his kindness and similarity to them, that humans have nothing to fear of Monsters!"

It took him a little longer, but Papyrus came around to joining everyone and by the time he was there, so was Sans all of a sudden.

"* The point that we have reached, was not reached on the back of a single one, but through the combined efforts of all of you. This village..." Toriel was the first to notice, and she didn't remain the only one for too long that got around to understanding that Asgore was nearing the point where he would have to overcome one of his weaknesses. Names. He had to name the village. "* This village..." More and more were getting tense, thinking about what accident of a name he could possibly pick. He had to act fast. Try and make the best of what he could think of. For the time being, it was probably best to go on and stall. "* This village, home to Monsters from the Ruins, Hotland, Waterfall and most of all, Snowdin..." He tried looking around to find something that gave him an idea. When he spotted the snowy roof of the skeleton house in the distance, he found something to go by. "* In respect to Snowdin, from where a lot of the people are to move here, and on a lot of which their homes are based off, I name this village..." CrawledUp? No, that was awful. Grounded? That sounded like a lot of things, but not a place to live. Newer Home? No, what in the world was he thinking? Snowdin, two words, making up one name. Described what happened to a lot of people. Chances were, they wouldn't have to fear getting snowed in up here most of the time. But they were on the surface for the first time. OnGround? No...the sun! The sun was shining! That was it. "* In respect and reference to how this village obtained some of it's look, and the sunlight we can enjoy here, unlike any place in the Underground, I name this place 'Shoneon'!" Everyone was relieved at how this wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been, applauded to Asgore stepping forward, while most moved aside, to stand between two humans who held opposite ends of a thick red band, and handed him a large pair of scissors to cut it apart with which drew one more particularly long round of applause. Those who weren't setting up decorations and arranging for food and tables for the oncoming celebration, were certainly getting around to that after the joyful cheers subsided. While everyone scattered, Asgore greeted the Dan. He had a particularly strong handshake as always. "* Howdy. Surprising to see you. How is your campaign going?"

There was a fire in his eyes that told Asgore all that he needed to know about whether Mr. Victor had any successes to report. "* It's incredible. They're running so many negative ads on me, they're spending millions and millions and even the news are just several long hour long negative ads on me if we're honest, but the people are seeing right through it. I was so amazed when it happened. They ignore the noise and the lies, and go to the booths to vote, all the rigging isn't enough to counter it. It's absolutely incredible. Ned suspended his campaign and he isn't coming back. We've gotta prepare to take down the big one."

"* The system itself?"

"* Nah, gotta deal with Adelaide first. A whole other gang of crooks are still waiting for us."

"* It appears you still have a lot of battles ahead of you then."

"* It's gonna be hard, they've got trillions invested in her. But I've gotta trust the people to know better than to fall for it. She's got more dirt on her than anyone can imagine."

Asgore laughed. "* Will you be leaving right away?"

"* And miss out on all these opportunities to get seen and filmed with so many Monsters? Hell no! Besides, 'fostering relations with new foreign people' makes for something they can't spin as something bad."

Most of who was going to stay here in the future, was either going to their new homes or heading for the Underground to fetch tables, food, decorations or something that belonged in their homes. Big Monsters like Fuzzybears and horned devils carried tables and chairs, Whimsuns hung up garlands along the street lights and Alphys turned her cell phone into a camera and got together with Undyne and Papyrus to record all the different places they came across. Papyrus liked to hog a lot of the screen time, mostly together with two Aarons who were dancing and flexing in the background and telling trivia about Monsters. The people they met in what little the village had for a park were the children. The children, Frisk and the human ones he appeared to befriend, took this opportunity to spend some time together, but couldn't talk about their past lives, because Monster Kid had joined the little gang and followed them around. Monster Kid was wearing a brown scarf, and was still in this phase, where he tried to emulate what Papyrus was like. This made for some material that Alphys hoped the humans would like if they put it out there in some fashion. Papyrus made some simple dance moves. In some cases, the child could only copy his stance, since imitating arm movements was impossible without arms. When they moved on, Papyrus commented on it. "I LIKE THAT ONE. HE'S GOING PLACES."

Undyne couldn't resist to ask in jest: "* You mean the way you went places?"

Either it didn't faze him or he took her seriously. "INDEED."

The little improvised film crew made of Alphys, Undyne, Papyrus, and whoever wanted to at the time, moved from road to road and got themselves a look at all the new places. On the smaller square a little further up into the Monster-built residencies, they clashed with the crew of Mettaton. "* OH MY! IT APPEARS WE HAVE RUN INTO SOME COMPETITION! WILL WE MAKE FRIENDS? OR ARE WE MET WITH A MERCILESS ADVERSARY? FIND OUT, AFTER THE BREAK!"

The skeleton was much more happy about this than the robot seemed to be. "THIS JUST GOT TEN TIMES BETTER!"

Mettaton patted the excited skeleton on the shoulder. "* I'M FLATTERED, DARLING. BUT WE CAN'T KEEP RUNNING INTO EACH OTHER LIKE THIS."

" WILL YOU AT LEAST GIVE ME AN AUTOGRAPH THIS TIME?"

"* I HAVE SOMETHING EVEN BETTER. SCOTT!" His winged assistant brought them something to sign, the value of which the overjoyed skeleton didn't understand until Alphys explained it to him later. It was a pre-release album. The original soundtrack of 'The Magnificent Machine', with all the songs of his new musical. He later kept it at a special place in his and Sans' new house and in the days that led to the official premiere, listened to the tracks, but kept the fact that he had it to himself. The three of them continued, while avoiding Mettaton's path, until Alphys determined that they had gathered enough for the time being. In Undyne and Alphys' house, they sat together to upload it on Papyrus' OurPipe channel and link it in the 'Monsters General - Spooky Skeleton Edition' thread, the name of which appeared to refer to based on the photos and descriptions, Sans' mysterious appearance in several far-apart polling stations at practically the same time, a few weeks ago.

As the hours passed, the tourists that were only there to see the the speech and get a look at the new village, were leaving, and new visitors came who were here for the celebration. Sans spent most of the time among Monsters, or sitting on the rooftops, keeping an eye on a lot of the crowded areas to make sure nothing bad was happening. The two knights of the royal guard - the only ones that looked like serious, actual knights, patrolled the streets as well. And even beyond that, it was all guarded and looked over a lot more thoroughly than the visitors and attendants probably thought it was. Once William had all the checkboxes on his list marked and there was no occasion for formal attire any more, Asgore went to his new house, to change into his casual clothes. Not that he had that many different sets of it He did put on a different shirt with more colourful flowers for a pattern. As soon as Frisk saw that looking out for so many things at the same time, was wearing down his mother, he did as Asgore did and spent quite some time in Toriel's new, empty house. Soon, most of the stage they had at the centre was relocated to make space for more tables and what was left of it, was only kept in more of a corner, so close to no-one had to sit at the opposite side of it.

It was still used, by dancing troupes, musicians, and other entertainers who came from the Underground, spent their time up here in the streets, entertaining passers-by and sometimes queued to get a shot at getting a shot at using the sound system the stage provided. It was all chaotic, new, and very strange to the visitors, although the Monsters were used to a lot of it already. Magic being a part of every day life made it so their spectacles were very different from human ones. While humans of similar caliber would impress through displays of dexterity and acrobatic prowess, achieved through a combination of extreme precision and the practise to execute it flawlessly, Monsters had similar stunts, but they were less dangerous, due to how they could use their different kinds of magic to save themselves if something happened. Instead of danger, self-confidence and expertise in simple physical tasks, the strengths they could improve on were scale, detail and sophistication, leading to them sometimes conjuring up downright hypnotic images through countless magic attacks woven through other magic attacks, all of which moved individually, but continually and with no mutual obstruction. As for magicians, of course Monsters used parlour tricks, but how big a thing were parlour tricks to humans really, when some of them could witness actual, real and sophisticated magic right before their very eyes?

It wasn't until it had been several hours since the opening ceremony, that large groups of female Monsters came down the cliff with all manner of foods, some of which were inspired by human ones, but some of which the humans had never seen. Here and there, they were accompanied by food manufacturers and catering, who sought to give the humans an appetite for what they made in the safety of the Underground, in hopes that they could gain some customers from the surface. It was impossible to walk around between the crowded tables and not to overhear a human comment on how light Monster food appeared to be to them, it was said over and over, so many times.

Actual, real fireworks were an unnecessary risk, if you had magic that allowed spectacles in bright shining colours as it was. And towards the evening, exactly that was what you could see in the sky above the inner parts of the village. It didn't have the loud noise, but it didn't lack the bright, colourful light either. And the people themselves were more than loud enough as it was. It was then, when it was still day, but the sun was soon going to set and all the new inhabitants were coming back from their new homes to join up with everyone else at and around the square, when the young page from the hotel - came by, drawing two wheelbarrows after him with the help of an army of Temmies, and leaned them against the still occupied stage. Asgore was sitting at a nearby table, and got curious enough upon seeing him, to walk up and ask them what this was about. "Good to see you, even if it is as late as this. What is all this?"

Instead of the young man, a Temmie that was standing on a Temmie who was standing on another Temmie, answered. "* hos tag h4f prepaerd teh tings 4 partey!"

The equipment he had brought along, was a projector with a few tools, cables and other components needed to hook it up, so it could project onto the white screen the Temmies were rolling down from the back facade of the stage. He pulled one table closer to place the projector on it and get to assemble it all in a way that it could run. "* I have no idea what all this is! They were already done when they got me to help put this together." The stream of Temmies didn't end with the first crowd that came with the young human. There were more and more of them, and they followed their habit of wherever there wasn't space for more, stacking themselves onto each other. "* They just showed up at home and demanded I help them." They also had a way of persuading people. While the human was getting done, some of the Temmies were climbing up to both sides of the screen and more of them poured in, until the entire length of the stage on the ground, as well as both sides of the screen on top were lined up with rows of Temmies standing on Temmies standing on Temmies standing on Temmies, standing on Temmies standing on Temmies. When the last crew of dancers was wrapping up, the human took the microphones they had, and three select Temmies wove at him. He then fixed the little pieces onto their striped shirts and got back to adjust the projector and connect it to his laptop. He looked more confused himself, than anyone around was over what was going on. And he had trouble shaking the feeling of being asked what this was. "* I really don't know what all this is, ask them!" The horned devil who was enjoying a few chops of fried lamb, had more of a disbelieving expression on his face, when he heard the page deflect anything about this onto the Temmies.

Asgore knew a bit better than to dismiss the young man. He turned to the wall of Temmies that was building up from in front of the stage, and asked them himself. "* My, aren't you a bit afraid of all coming out here like this?"

Most of them didn't respond, but only looked at him, with all manner of silly faces, just like the rest of them were. Only one spoke up. "* no warris. wi r alw0is prepaerd! teMs and odder m0nst4rs saef."

"* Are you sure? You're pretty out in the open here."

For a moment, her eyes focused onto him and she broke character. "* Trust us. We have it covered.", but right after that, she went right back to squinting as if nothing had happened. "* nao is TEM 4 partay!" That was all the assurance the king needed, and he was more than willing to take her word for it. Who knew how many invisible frigates and keeps were flying around Shoneon Village at the moment after all. After a while of the human running back and forth and double-checking everything, it seemed to be time for whatever this was, to start. When he started it - whatever it was. It started with a few simple drawings, illustrated in shades of brown and black, to give the impression of old paper, the images of which seemed strangely familiar to Asgore. One of them was very clearly the silhouette of the king's father - he could tell from the armor and the broken horn - in front of an army of humans. A simplified summary of what led them to be sealed in the Underground, with a few in-built inaccuracies such as his father wielding a trident and not a scythe. Or the person facing off with the humans being his father and not himself. For the most part, it made little sense to Asgore why they included the broken-off horn.

What followed was a very crudely drawn animation. You could only roughly determine what was what and who was who by the colours, the actual drawings themselves were too random and indiscernible to tell what they were depicting, just from their shape. The little blob of blue, purple, yellow and brown was probably Frisk, walking through completely dark ruins. It first stopped moving at a patch of green and yellow. Everything was accompanied by music, sung in a flawlessly coordinated choir made up of all the Temmies that had lined and stacked up around here, not with text, but just 'doos' of different length and height. The music was another part of how to roughly determine what was happening, or at least get an idea of the atmosphere around anything that was happening. The taller 'something' in the royal colours and white around the upper half, was probably Toriel. He didn't wrap his head around it at the very beginning, because he didn't know about anything that happened in the beginning of it, but it was soon apparent, that what the Temmies were presenting and singing to, was Frisk's journey through the Underground.

A few tables further away, together with Toriel, sat the human this was all about and was intently watching this musical retelling of his story, together with a few other human and non-human children.

To Asgore's shock, after Toriel and the child arrived at the door to Snowdin, something was flooding the screen - the humans probably couldn't tell, but he could only deduce that this was an abstraction of countless fireballs. Was she fighting him? After how she seemed to have taken him to her heart for as long as he had seen her since she ran away, did she try to kill him herself the whole time? Even if not, exposing a child to the threat of being burned like that. Given the situation, it was justifiable, but if she saw a way around it, it wasn't. She judged Asgore so harshly, after letting every child before walk right into their deaths and then even endangered the one she came out of hiding to save? Sure, she was a Monster, and one that could well control the strength of her magic attacks, but still, doing what these images implied that she did - if it weren't for the boy's determination if it had been any child other than him - doing what she did would have doomed them to their certain death. Just like it did with the previous six.

He could tell from what he heard, that he wasn't the only one that recognized what that was. When the blue-purple-yellow-brown blob went around a corner, between the blue-white and the red-white one, Papyrus stood up and shouted at his brother."WAIT A MINUTE! SANS! HE WAS RIGHT THERE THE WHOLE TIME? AND YOU DIDN'T TELL ME?"

The smaller skeleton of course played innocent as usual. "* looked a lot like a rock to me."

"DON'T PLAY GAMES, YOU KNEW EXACTLY THAT THIS WASN'T A ROCK!"

"* guess ya caught me."

Asgore found it to be a better idea to walk over and talk to the child himself. "* Say." He tipped on his shoulder, with extra care not to do so too hard with hands as big as his. "* Would you like to have more of a front row seat?" The child paused, exchanged looks with Toriel, and then nodded with a smile, before he followed the king to the front table, next to where the page was sitting and keeping watch that there was nothing interrupting this - thing, and sat down in front of him, where he could keep watch over him. Sooner or later, he would return back to Toriel. He just had to trust in the child's determination and hope that Toriel would actually watch over him and not be the thing he needs protection from.

He did like the theme they accompanied Papyrus with, it sounded familiar and really helped lift the child's spirits. Judging from how it was animated, Papyrus was the first one of all the Monsters that attacked the child, to really try and get a hold of him. He didn't expect the skeleton he believed couldn't hurt a fly, to be the one the Temmies portrayed as such a fierce warrior. Or maybe, it was just the significance of the battle, that they highlighted. Despite the lack of detail, that made it impossible for anyone without prior knowledge to have an idea what all this was, they really staged it in a way that had even the humans that came close enough glued to it. And anyone could have seen that dropping down the way he did in Waterfall was very dangerous, and was all the more relieved to see the blob they probably didn't recognize walk around afterwards as if nothing had happened. The travelling parts were sped up similarly to winding a vhs cassette forward, and only stopping at the interesting bits . Of course they included their own village, along with the song they always sung in it, but put it's entrance at a completely different location from where it really was. Telling from the rough location. The battle against Undyne was going to be very hard to construe as anything but a battle. Then again, chances were none of them had an idea what all this was, the child got out alive and well, and they could still have Undyne argue that he was intruding in the Underground and that she didn't know any better.

His travels through Hotland with the many intermissions on Mettaton's part, made it all a lot more cheerful again. One bit that had him worried though, was that he could tell the part where a whisperer attacked. That tone of their purple skin and the strict, stretched white lines that depicted cobwebs were impossible to confuse for anything else. When the Frisk-blob arrived at New Home though, something seemed to bother the real Frisk. It was really bothering him. It was sudden enough for Asgore to tell that there was something he didn't want to think about. It wasn't the unavoidable battle with Asgore though, he trembled less, when the blob reached the golden hall, where Sans-blob was waiting for him. It resumed when it was time though. When it got to the wide yellow of Asgore's throne room, the child faced him. "* I'm sorry...", he stuttered. All Asgore could do, is pull him a little closer into his side.

"* You had no choice, it is over now." They never fought, not as far as Asgore could remember, but he knew better than to trust his own memory, with a child that could turn back time. Just before Frisk-blob was about to enter the final room, where Asgore waited to face off with him, the journey led backwards through the Underground and then through Sans' old laboratory, that Alphys had taken over. Despite the darkness and the disturbing music, this didn't seem to bother the child as much. It was what followed it, that did. When he came back to the castle, and the abstractions of all six of them, Asgore and Toriel, the skeleton brothers, Alphys and Undyne came together, that the little yellow thing from the beginning appeared. Soon after that, everything faded into white light, to leave behind a black-and-white thing in front of Frisk-blob in the middle of a black void. Nothing about the 'battle' that followed made any sense to Asgore, or anyone for that matter. Everything around was filled with all colours of the rainbow, massive, fragmenting attacks shattered all around, lightning struck the area around the child, and the real one became more and more tense, until he sobbed, got up without a word and left. Asgore asked him what was wrong, but he didn't answer. He even made efforts not to let Asgore see his face. Something about this was really crushing him. The king got up and wanted to go after him to ask what was wrong, but he figured it was better to let him go, when he saw the child leave with Toriel without further ado. He must have been very adamant about not seeing any of this any more. What was this? What was this all-powerful entity he was fighting that Asgore couldn't recall?

Cursed Temmies, what other secrets were they keeping from him? When the black-and-white-entity the yellow one had turned into, changed shape yet again, Asgore was certain what he saw was the shape of the royal banner. The Delta Rune. The wings, the circle, it was all there, it was fighting Frisk-blob. And no matter how many attacks it threw at him, it didn't seem like it was winning. Instead, it ended up ceasing it's assault, turned back into whatever small thing with the colours of a golden flower it was, raised itself up, and with one massive 'attack', did - something - something that based on what Asgore remembered that creating it looked like, could only be destroying the barrier, before it got together with Frisk-blob for a brief moment, and then left. This was it, this was all that the Temmies showed, before the animation ended, the stacked-up rows of Temmies disbanded, urged the human hotel worker to turn off the projector, and the remaining ones sang a more settling down and more and more silent continuation of their song, only to finish it up for good eventually. When it was all done, humans, Monsters, everyone cheered with enormous excitement and no sign of it dying down too soon. They were all celebrating what transpired before their eyes as something bombastic and wonderful, but to Asgore it didn't feel right. He could sense what was going on with the child when he was still there. And it wasn't happiness, or excitement. It was sadness. A crushing sadness that he couldn't explain to himself. He was going to have to be patient and wait for however long it would take until he got all his answers, but the questions filled his mind regardless. The Monsters were free, were they not? What was this battle, and what was this thing he was fighting? It wasn't him, it was that thing. And it seemed to mean a lot to him. It was beyond doubt that Frisk had a lot to do with why they were free, but they truly had to thank whatever it was that he persuaded to help with this. If this angel - or as some referred to it, the angel of death, really existed, what was it and where could he find it?

He hoped he could find out, but it was only two weeks later, during his turn to look after the child, that he got so much as a hint of what this was all about.

* * *

It was the end. The final battle. Frisk was promised he would get his happy ending, if he only beat him. The grown, almighty form of Asriel, the absolute god of Hyperdeath floated in front of him, the force of his sheer magical power illuminated the void he had created around them. He raised his hands. Electric bolts fizzed around his hands. "* ...Everyone's Memories. I'll bring them all back to zero!", the prince shouted and directed his attack towards the human child. Floating from place to place - how ever he did that, Frisk dodged the incoming strikes of lightning from above.

He remembered all this. He remembered it clearly. He had done it before. Did he go back and do it all over again? He wasn't sure, but that didn't matter. He was here, and all that mattered, was doing something - anything - different, so he could maybe find away to SAVE one more person than before. He screamed on his last push to outrun and then dodge the wave of strikes. "* No! Stop! We can't keep repeating this!" Asriel's hands were already sparkling, but he stopped talking and only floated around without ushering a word. "* Please, I don't want it to go the same way! Come with us! Somehow!" Everything around him was shaking. He knew where this would go, but he refused to accept that. He couldn't accept it. "* You can't just let things be that way!"

The failed attempt at an evil grin on Asriel's face faded and made way for a warm smile. Without casting another spell, he lowered his hands. "* It has to be this way. This is it. This is the ending you wanted. The happiest one there is. We can't have everything. There just are some rules to the world. "

"* Screw the rules!", Frisk snapped. "* There's got to be a way!" Although it was more crying than snapping. His eyes were overflowing with tears, and his nose was running. "* Look at Mom and Dad! Look at the statues people put up for you!"

Asriel was completely calm. "* I don't want them to lose me again."

"* How is not coming back at all because of that any better?" He was hyperventilating and felt the currents of pure power surround him all the more than otherwise, this was how desperate he was to persuade him, but it didn't do anything to lessen Asriel's conviction. He closed his eyes and stretched out his white hand. "* What are you doing? Talk to me!" Frisk was feeling torn and squeamish before, but his body turned more and more tense, his muscles stiffened and shook, until he was torn back to life, with a painful cramp in his foot. He was in bed, in his bedroom in Dad's house. He wasn't fully aware that he was just dreaming until he woke up. He had to flinch at the pain and lay there - as far as he could - motionlessly. It was all a dream. He hadn't gone all the way back, Asriel didn't remember it, and they didn't have this conversation. He was still on the surface, with his friends - and all the other Monsters - happy that they had a comfortable home up here. All of them but one.

* * *

The king didn't expect anything ahead of time. It was one of several days ever since the Monsters that became his new neighbours finally moved up here. When they got exactly what they wanted. There wasn't a time where everyone could be happier, at least, an outsider would think so. He and Toriel - with some help from the child - had come to an agreement that they would take turns watching over the boy. Asgore spent the evenings - including this one - doing what he liked to do: Water and grow flowers and other plants in every flowerbed, lawn - even the smallest patches of grass he could find. Having a lot more space to do that in allowed him to go all out. When he was done with this place, there was to be an overgrowth of flora wherever a human could tread. But once at home, all the way down the hallway, he could hear something. It was too silent for an ordinary human's hearing to pick up, but he was neither ordinary, nor human. No boss monster was. It was the irregular and interrupted sniveling and sobbing of a child that can't stop crying. All his contentment over how things had gone vanished completely, and he placed the watering can next to the door before closing it.

If he didn't tell him on one of his first three days here, it wasn't likely that the child would come running to him now, so Asgore decided to take a bit of a less direct approach to this at first. He couldn't ignore this, even if he wanted to. Not so long as he knew that Toriel wasn't the reason for this, and not so long as he hadn't tried doing what he could about this. He turned off the lights and slowly walked down the hallway. He had to go past it to get to his own bedroom anyway. As he expected, the moment he came close enough, the child turned silent. And continued mourning whatever it was mourning, when the king had moved far away enough for him to believe Asgore couldn't hear him. There was something very serious, that he was keeping to himself. If it was this serious, he was possibly keeping it to himself entirely. He had agreed to raise this child as if he was his father. He had a responsibility. A duty of care. He knew that what Frisk wanted, was probably for him to not notice - much like how Toriel did from what it seemed like - and ignore it. He couldn't ignore this. This was one of those times where a parent needed to step in and be there for their child.

After sitting on his bed for a minute, he tried to give the child one more chance to come to him with whatever this was by himself, by getting up and pretending to head to the kitchen to get something to drink. But the same pattern from before repeated itself. The same suppressed crying turned completely silent when he neared the door, and got audible again when he was in the kitchen. Maybe he just underestimated Asgore's hearing, or maybe he had gotten away with keeping whatever this was from Toriel that way and didn't think this would fail to work with Asgore. Whatever he was burdening himself with, this was the time for Asgore turn around and step in. 'In' being the room he had the Builvers include for the child to live in. He went straight back to the door, but pushed down the handle and gently pushed the door open. Frisk was pretending to sleep, facing in the opposite direction. "* Child..." He walked inside and kept the door open. "* I know you're awake." The child slowly turned around to face him, still in a pretense to be sleepy, but with all the telltale signs that he expected. "* You must think very lowly of how good my ears are, if you think this works with me." His words were harsh, but his voice as soft as was possible. He preferred not to sit on a bed built for human youths, so he sat down next to it and leaned onto it's side with one elbow. "* What is wrong?"

The child formed a smile with his still trembling mouth. "* Nothing. I was sleeping."

"* You liar.", the king mused, brushing the top of the child's hair. "* I can hear you from all the way to the other side." This startled the little human enough to prompt an involuntary sniff. He probably caught himself almost gasping. "* What is bothering you?" A few moments of silence passed. The child was about to claim that nothing was, but he interrupted him. "* It must bear very heavily on you, if you think you can't even share it with me."

He was getting through to him. The facade of contentment was breaking, but he kept denying it. "* There's nothing."

"* Liar."

"* I'm fine..." He was saying otherwise, but Asgore knew that the child knew that Asgore wasn't convinced at all. And that nothing could. He knew better.

"* No you're not." He couldn't drop this. Dropping this was irresponsible. "* No-one is fine and yet cries like that about something they believe they can't even share with their own parents." He distinctly looked the child in the eyes. "* I agreed to be one of yours. I know there is something on your mind, and I won't leave until you shared it with me." He was trembling, but not answering. Something was preventing him from opening up. "* Whatever it is, I promise I won't tell anyone, and if you share it with me, you will feel better about it."

They stayed like this for quite a while. Maybe he was struggling to open up, maybe he was hoping he could out-wait Asgore's patience, maybe it was a mix of the above, but you couldn't out-wait Asgore's resolve. Not as easily as this at least. Eventually, he answered. "* I can't."

"* Why?"

"* I promised not to..."

A promise? No, he wasn't going to let this stand. Even if whatever it was involved some secret he promised to keep, Asgore couldn't just abandon the child the way he wanted him to. "* Come here." There wasn't much resistance, when he helped Frisk prop himself up and sit at the bedside. "* Even if you have a secret, I'm not leaving you alone with this. I am here for you. If there is something you can't tell me, then don't. Just tell me what you can tell me." As far as their differing sizes allowed, he tried to give the sobbing child a hug. "* There, there. Just tell me."

"* Okay...okay..." He needed to collect himself. "* When I was traveling through the Underground - you all thought I was all alone, right?"

He wasn't just asking for confirmation of this, he needed encouragement to keep going, so Asgore nodded. "* Yes..."

"* I wasn't alone. I was never alone. I had a friend. No matter where I was, no matter how often I went somewhere, he was always there with me. We didn't always get along. We fought several times. But that was okay." The child started letting loose for a moment. "* He was all alone before I was there. It did some weird things to him...but in the end, we made up and for a while, were best friends."

"* But this sounds wonderful, child." He kept holding him tight.

"* But..." The child was already in tears, but it could still hold back up until then. This was where he broke down. "*...something happened.", he continued under shudders. "* Something happened and it happened long, long before I could do anything. I wanted to SAVE him. I really wanted to SAVE him. I tried to. Believe me. Please, believe me! I tried! I tried so many times!" He was getting louder and louder, and more and more agitated. "* I really, really tried!"

It seemed like he cared a lot - more than a lot actually - about Asgore believing that he did, even though he didn't feel much more wise to what this was about. The way Frisk sounded...it didn't just sound like he was sad...it felt more like he was sorry. "* It's all right. I believe you did." Sorry for what though? Or who? For Asgore?

"* He's gone now, and I don't know how to get him back!" The child's grip on the shirt's fabric on Asgore's shoulder tightened. "* I miss him, Dad! I miss him and everyone would be so much happier if I could only save him!" He kept going on and on. And finally, the child was letting it all out and allowing himself to cry as openly as he probably couldn't in a long, long time. All that he said was an endless repetition of how he missed 'him' - the entity from the Temmies' musical presumably - how he didn't know how to bring 'him' back, and how he really wanted to. The poor child. Having this on top of all that must have happened in the Underground, and after whatever must have driven him to jump down there to begin with. Asgore knew what it was like all too well. In hindsight, this entire situation felt to him like he knew it was something like this from the start somehow. The tragedy of losing someone that was dear to oneself. He could relate to it in times like these all too well. He lived on, and he was happy about how he could fulfill his peoples' dreams, but...

He missed his son so much. He couldn't even be the strong shoulder he needed to be. He was lucky enough that they weren't looking at each other. That helped with how the confidence vanished from the king's face, tears ran down his own face and eventually, he ceased to be the calm giant he was trying to be. To so frivolously make himself the 'father' of this child, and then disgrace himself like this. He couldn't help it. Asriel...He wanted to see him again so badly. The child's words resonated with him in a way he didn't expect. He wanted to see his son's smile when he came home. He wanted to see how happy he was, when he and Chara were playing in the garden. He wanted to see him gaze in awe, when Asgore showed him some spell or move he wanted to teach him. He could only own up to it after he allowed himself to be so weak around his protege. He pulled himself together. "* Listen, my child. Listen closely.", he answered, calming down as he did. "* What you're feeling is not foreign to me at all. I know what it is like, all right?" He gave the child a pause to allow him to calm down a bit. "* You can always come to me with these kinds of things. Never think you should keep something that weighs on you like that all to yourself, just because you don't want to burden others with it. As long as you don't want me to, I will not say a word to anyone. Now..." He let go and sat back on the floor. "* Do you feel better now?" The child nodded. "* Promise me. Don't burden yourself like this again. You shouldn't and you don't need to. You're just a little boy after all." He ruffled Frisk's hair, which drew a slight smile from the human. When the human was pulling the covers back up, and Asgore closed the door, he had calmed down. Both of them had.

But in spite of this, there was someone they both couldn't stop missing. There was someone they both couldn't stop missing so much.

* * *

It didn't make sense to me at the time. None at all, so I didn't believe it. I wove it aside whenever it was about to occur to me. I thought it was completely impossible, from all I had heard and read. It only did much later, when I learned something new about how souls worked, so I tossed any notion of it away, even though it was staring me in the face at all times in a way I couldn't ignore. But deep down, even if only a bit, - and even all the way back then - I missed them as well.

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* * *

 **Next Time**

"* No centaur is safe, so long as the white ones - think they can safely tread the surface."

"...we need to peer into the essence of the soul!"

"* Howdy - if it isn't the most splendorous of skeletons!"

"COOKING?"

"* Anything but police work actually."

"* Yeah, so if we were to do that, what do we do to catch bad guys?"

"* We don't expect you to keep up. Just to somehow fit in."

"I THINK I KNOW WHERE HE IS."


	34. My Undying Love

.

A Knight's Coolest Dish

Chapter 01

My Undying Love

* * *

"So, this would be the point where we pause to ask questions about anything that wasn't clear, before we move on to the next topic."

"U-uhm."

"Yes, Alphys?"

"Uh...so just before we went outside and destroyed this winged serpent..."

"Wind serpent."

"...wind serpent, you said something...'by Asriel's beard'?"

"Yes? So?"

"Is there another Asriel in the future?"

"No, I was referring to Asriel...the Asriel? Asriel Dreemurr? The Asriel Dreemurr? Second Emperor of the Atelian Empire and son of Asgore Dreemurr?"

"But...he can't have a beard...or be emperor...he died."

"So what?"

"What?"

"You heard my question. So what if he died?"

"But then he can't..."

"Yes he can. I died and I'm right in front of you. As did Sans and Papyrus, yet we're all here are we not?"

"WAIT...WE DIED?"

"That's not important right now. The point is, yes he died. But that doesn't mean he's gone. This isn't the grey, depressing universe the humans thought this was, where nothing interesting whatsoever exists or happens and the most standing-out humanoids are dull, violent brutes who come here for a free ride, kill humans and each other on a daily basis and then blame humans for their problems. This is a universe where Monsters exist, with magic that comes in all forms and where the sciences leave nothing in the realm of the impossible. What meaning does death have if the future has threefold cross-species resurrection matrices? And that isn't even necessary in this case. You know damn well that he's around."

"But...the flower's just a flower, right? It just has his memories."

"And where exactly do you think the memories come from? Hm? Do you think memories are something that is just sort of there and can just traverse into inanimate objects through osmosis? All right. This will be the next lesson then. Asriel is far from gone. But to understand how he is, we need to peer into the essence of the soul! Now, you know what happens to a Monster's soul when a Monster dies, right? Say this stone is a Monster soul. While a human soul persists and then diffuses into it's surroundings after a while, a Monster soul, at least the ones that last long enough for you to see it, will break apart into countless pieces. Little Sans, please help me demonstrate this on the stone."

"Ah!"

"No worries. Now, the Monster died and the soul is gone, right? The soul is this stone. So if the stone is just gone, it poofed away, and there is nothing left of it...what exactly am I holding in my hand right now?"

"A piece of it?"

"A piece of the stone! Exactly! And Monster Souls work similarly. They are subject to soul diffusion the same way human souls are, it just takes a lot longer in the case of humans, because of their determination and the strength of their souls, but essentially, the same thing happens. And something that is part of the soul, the core of the soul, the true culmination of one's being, is the essence. You all probably know the common belief that if you place something that a dead Monster liked on their remains, their essence will move into it? Well, that belief isn't entirely false. Even a person's essence can't persist forever, but it is real and it persists for a lot longer than a soul. For as long as it can latch onto and hold together the smallest piece of it's soul, an essence will hold onto life, with all it's memory, it's personality, all that made up what and who they are. And it will take the path of least resistance and traverse into whatever it can relate to. Memories fade away with the essence, and the essence is the core of the core of a person. An essence can't partially dissipate, it's like an on- or off-switch. Either it exists, or it doesn't. So the only explanation for 'Flowey' having our prince's memories, is that he indeed IS our prince. Asriel was never fully gone. Whether it was through Chara's determination, or through the determination overload you gave his new vessel in time to prevent the last bits of his soul to vanish, but he is very well wandering among us. The flower is the prince. He would probably like us to think otherwise, but it's simply not true. He can play the identity game for as long as he likes, but our prince will sooner or later have to come to grips with the fact that 'Flowey' and Asriel Dreemurr are the same person. The things that Flowey did, are things that Asriel did and vice versa. What comes next for him, is to grasp how cruel this world is, while learning to appreciate the parts of it that aren't, and seeing the sense in trying to lessen the parts that are, as well as understanding what must be done to achieve that."

* * *

She was doing it again. I couldn't believe my eyes, when I sneaked into Asgore's house and saw a fish in her early teens climb into the kings house through the window, spend at least an hour eavesdropping at his bedroom door, and listen to him snore. She probably did so for longer, but I lost my patience and stopped watching her after a while. She was doing that at an alarming frequency. And recently, every night. Worse yet, she devoted hours and hours of every day to training and trying to become stronger to impress him. She visited the royal training grounds every day, and always at times when Asgore was there as well. She had a little altar prepared to quickly set up whenever she thought nobody was watching, with little mementos and souvenirs of her encounters with the king, and a little crude stone stone statue she made herself, with horns at it's top, which she hid away in the cupboard. This wasn't just a teenage crush any more. This was becoming an obsession. And I knew I needed to put a stop to it. Even if I somehow made it worse, I could always go back to do the last four years all over again and explore a different approach, but by now, I had had enough experience with people that I was confident to not get this too wrong on the first try. I couldn't do this on my own though, most of what I did, I did through a willing puppet. My go-to approach to anything diplomatic in most cases was and remained Papyrus.

He didn't know who she was though, so I was going to have to give him directions and first, I needed to find a way to safely navigate him past the other skeleton. That was the tricky bit in most timelines, because that smaller skeleton could somehow remember things and he was really persistent whenever he thought he was about to catch me. And he forced some instant resets out of me several times, just so I could deny him the satisfaction of confronting me. Fortunately though, this being a longer timeline meant that he also didn't bother with trying to find me that much, and was happy enough that life went on. Like that was going to go on forever, but who was I to pull someone out of their delusions on life? All the better if he could convince himself for a brief time, that this was going to end. It was going to make seeing his face all the sweeter when he wakes up back in Snowdin. I waited until Sans got busy slacking off from his 'duty' as a sentinel and started practising knock-knock jokes on his pet door. This was something he made conscious efforts not to be interrupted at, probably because it was the one part of his everyday life where he really, really did relax. Papyrus was in Waterfall in the meantime. The perfect place for me to talk to him. It allowed to better deny that I was real and it was at least closer to Undyne's far-away home than Snowdin. He was practising his boisterous introductions in front of an echo flower. He did this regularly, either it was that, or it was flaunting how self-absorbed he was in front of nobody. I sprung up next to it with a grin to get his attention. "* Howdy! If it isn't the most splendorous of skeletons! What are we up to today, I wonder?"

He was in sort of a phase, where he dressed like a character from stories that Sans read to him. He was shrouded in all-white linen with a yellow cloth wrapped together to make a round cap and a long red cape to top it off with 'his own style'. "HELLO, LITTLE FLOWER. I'M JUST PREPARING TO RE-INTRODUCE MYSELF TO THE FINE FOLKS OF SNOWDIN." Maybe he wouldn't have to re-introduce himself to them if he was just normal around them. But then again, the more time he spent alone, the more opportunity I had to involve him in whatever caught my interest.

"* That's good to hear. Say, can I ask you for a favour? It's a really big one though. I'd be soo thankful if you did this for me."

The skeleton clapped his hands together with joy. "BUT OF COURSE! HOW COULD I SAY NO?" This was one of the timelines, where I contemplated 'dying'. Of course I couldn't really die. I never really died. A flower like me would have died ages ago, even if stuck in the most fertile ground, with sunlight and regular watering. A normal flower that was. I didn't die. I never died. Believe me, I tried. Trying had long become a standard exercise to me. If anything was ever deadly enough to seem like it could kill me, it would just send me all the way back to where I started, and it would be like I never died. But within a shorter time span, I was running out of things to do, decisions to make, and to test what caused which reaction. And when even testing for how my surroundings worked didn't interest me any more, I had this idea. I couldn't die, but I could retreat into the darkness, not move and just wait the world out. People who died, waited things out too, they just didn't do it consciously. Whenever I felt more and more like doing that for longer periods of time or even forever, I made sure that things went well. I couldn't leave a wreck of an Underground in my wake, could I now? If I left things behind in an arrangement that was any less than optimal, who knew what could happen without me to fix it? In the timelines where I did that, I used all the knowledge I had of what would play out how in the Underground. If some kid played on a dangerous spikes with stalagmites below, I would know if and when they were in real danger. If someone taking this or that detour or walking along this or that cliff, I knew which cliff it was off which they would fall, when they would, and how to avoid this happening to them. I knew all the things that would happen with or without my intervention, and intervened in all the crucial parts that had anything bad happen to prevent them. And most of these interventions, I made through Papyrus. He was the one who to some extent knew that it was me they had to thank for it all. So for him, I was owed a lot of favours.

"* Good, good. There's this girl and she..."

The skeleton shook together, his eye-sockets sparkling - however that worked - and held both sides of his teeth as if they were his nonexistent cheeks. "OH MY GOD! THE FLOWER'S FIRST LOVE!" What?

I was pretty dumbstruck by this and blushed - one of the many things I could somehow just do, despite - well you can guess why I found it strange at first. "* What? No! That's not it!" This skeleton was just staring at me with toothy smile and his 'eyes' peeking out. "* Someone else sure thinks it has to do with love."

The enamoured sentinel was dancing around me in a circle. "I DON'T JUST THINK IT! I KNOW IT! YOU HAVE HOPELESSLY FALLEN IN LOVE WITH THE GIRL OF YOUR DREAMS AND NOW, SQUEAMISH TO MENTION IT TO ANYONE, YOU COME TO THE GREAT PAPYRUS FOR ADVICE. NO NEED TO DENY IT! I KNOW YOU WANT TO CONFESS YOUR UNDYING LOVE FOR HER!"

I sighed. This wasn't going anywhere near I wanted it to. Sure, he had his advantages. He was gullible beyond belief, you could use him for good and for bad, save people from mistakes, or lure them into an ambush, he was a good pawn for all of it. And within each timeline, a great deal of deniability came with him. If he told people that a talking Flower had instructed him to do something, especially if the conversation happened in Waterfall, nobody believed him. But god, he was so tremendously daft and jumped to conclusions whenever he could. I figured that if I played along, he would do as I needed him to do regardless. "* All right, you got me. How about this? If I promise to confess my undying love for her at some undefined point in the future, will you promise me to give a break about it, do as I say and keep quiet about it?"...Ever since I started telling you all this, I can't shake the feeling that if this whole thing succeeds, I'm going to regret having said that all those years ago. At least if he remembers it.

Wait, how did I - oh yes, 'my undying love for Undyne'. The skeleton nodded, drew the motion of a zipper being pulled shut around his steeth and held out an open hand. "OF COURSE. AS LONG AS YOU'RE HONEST ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS, THAT'S GOOD ENOUGH. SO WHAT ABOUT IT IS SO IMPORTANT?" I explained the whole situation with Asgore's recent marine stalker. "OH GOODNESS! COMPETING WITH HIS MAJESTY, ARE WE? THAT'S A TOUGH ONE."

"* Yes...competing...that's what it is. So are you going to help me or not?"

"OF COURSE, HOW CAN THE GREAT PAPYRUS FORSAKE A FRIEND IN NEED?"

"* Excellent. Follow me." With my guidance, we headed through the city of New Home, past Darkmarsh Bay and to it's still barely lit villages, located in their entirety on wooden boardwalks between vast moors and swamps. It was so dark here at all times, you couldn't see further than a few dozen metres. The piers the wooden houses were built onto were just a foot above the knee-deep water of a swamp. I stayed just around the corner from the front door of the fish-in-question's home, and had Papyrus knock on it. Her mother was there, but Undyne was out of house. That didn't matter. I knew where she went, whenever she wasn't either at Asgore's or in the royal training grounds. Quite a stretch down the pathways, out of the large cluster of outwardly decrepit houses and past crowds of busy fish, we came to a round plateau, smoothly carved out of stone and towering just above the water. It's surface was flat and composed of pretty wide tiles. Most of it was occupied by a group of young men playing a ball game, but in one corner off to the side, there was a girl with a slightly receding hairline and quite the visible tension tossing short, summoned spears at a wooden dummy that she must have made herself, judging by how crude it looked. She was either so angry or so intensely in the moment, that she was grunting with every attack she launched. Sometimes, between ordinary attacks, she closed her eyes and tried to hit her target without looking. She didn't seem to mind how dangerous that was. I was hidden in Papyrus' robe with a few vines wrapped around his shoulder blade to give myself some safety and not be seen by all the people. "* I think this is her." Papyrus stopped and examined her from the distance. "* Does she look like she's about to murder someone?"

The skeleton paused to watch her practise as carelessly as she did for a little longer before he came to his conclusion. "YES."

"* Don't worry, that's what she always looks like."

"REASSURING." He didn't sound very reassured. "SO WHAT AM I GOING TO SAY TO HER?"

"* Just repeat after me and we'll be fine." The fish girl stopped hurling spears once Papyrus was getting too close. "HOWDY.", the nervous skeleton began. "I'M PAPYRUS, THE SKELETON." Undyne stared at him and didn't say a word. And for an awkwardly long time.

"* Ugh, talk about a tough crowd.", I whispered.

Papyrus repeated after me. "UGH, TALK ABOUT A TOUGH CROWD. NO, THAT WASN'T...YOU'RE KINDA TENSE, YOUNG LADY. IS SOMETHING ON YOUR MIND?" In time to save it - hopefully - I came to realize that Papyrus was either trusting me fully, or didn't waste any thoughts to consider what was me telling him what to say, and what was me just talking to him.

She remained as distant as I feared she would, in the wake of a complete stranger talking to her like that. "* That's none of your business." She seemed unimpressed. And she seemed like she was convinced that she needed to be impressed by someone for them to be worth her attention.

I was hoping I could avoid blackmailing her, but she wasn't giving me much of a choice on this route. If all didn't work out, I could always go all the way back, redo the last four years again and again, explore what she answered to what and find the optimal solution, but I was on this exact path for the first time and I preferred to always try and solve things on the first try when as far ahead in time as this. I continued giving Papyrus things to say and hoped he wouldn't screw it up. "SO...IN YOUR CUPBOARD, BEHIND YOUR CLOTHES."

This caught her attention at once. She shrugged together in shock and looked all around to make sure none of the people on the stone platform were in hearing range. She dispelled the last spear and came closer, which forced me to whisper a lot more quietly. "* How do you know? Did you break into our house?" She was speaking in a lowered voice and from the sounds of it, would have been screaming if it weren't for her not wanting to draw any attention to this whatsoever. She came closer, stood straight and tried to look as intimidating as she could. "* I'm gonna tell on you if you tell on me!" Threatening him back in spite of the circumstances? Impressive.

The skeleton stepped back and put up his arms in defense. Among other things, so I could continue to feed him all the words. "OKAY, OKAY. NO NEED TO GO OVERBOARD WITH THIS, PULL Y..." This time, he realized in time that me telling him to pull himself together was an instruction on what to do, not on what to say. "LOOK UNDYNE, I KNOW MORE THAN ENOUGH ABOUT WHAT'S IN YOUR CUPBOARD."

"* Where from?"

"A LITTLE FLOWER TOLD ME?"

She didn't believe him, but it did get her to calm down and fold up her arms while she stood in place. "* A flower, huh?"

"YES, A FLOWER. A FLOWER IN WATERFALL."

"* Sure, one of these blue ones, right? We got these too."

"NO..YES A BLUE ONE."

With newfound confidence, she came closer and gave Papyrus a cheeky look. "* Then tell your friend that he should take this to me himself." She slowly went to her dummy and got set up to leave with it.

I couldn't let her get away without her being given some clear and unmistakable words. With a little encouragement from me, Papyrus took a solid stance and stopped her with the ominous tone of his voice. "IT'S UNHEALTHY, UNDYNE. DON'T YOU THINK HE'S A LITTLE...OLD FOR YOU? AND EVEN IF NOT, NOTHING LESS THAN THE QUEEN IS GOING TO BE GOOD ENOUGH FOR HIM." She looked back at him with half-open eyes and muttered something through her gritted teeth. "YOU'RE SETTING YOURSELF UP TO GET HURT."

She turned around before I and Papyrus could go on. "* You know jack about me! Tell that to your friend. I'm gonna show him! Even if anyone finds out, I'm gonna show them all!" From how she was getting louder and louder, and her fists were trembling more and more, this was really getting to her. After her short little temper tantrum, she picked up the dummy she had dropped and stormed off. The nearby fish people were already looking. The skeleton slowly made to leave this place as well, once he was sure Undyne was gone. Her showing this much disrespect used to lead to me trying out how she reacted if people like her neighbours or her parents suffered a tragic accident, but in her case, I had explored all these possibilities a long time ago. There was nothing new to find out, so I brought Papyrus back to where he found his way back home and made sure to keep watching Undyne to see the results of this little encounter. If I made some massive mistake with this, I needed to know what it was and how to avoid it next time.

She kept visiting Asgore, kept up her training routine and kept sneaking to his home at night in the days that followed, but over time, I came to notice that Papyrus had had an effect on her after all. When she visited the king, her overenthusiasm was fading, and she avoided looking him in the eyes whenever they met. In one night, when her parents were out, at the time she'd usually leave through the window to sneak into Asgore's house and eavesdrop on him when he was either fast asleep or couldn't sleep from thinking about Toriel, she instead walked up and down her room. She had a pattern in regards to the times at which she would get ready for this, and she was breaking it. She was reconsidering whether she should go. She went anyway, but this 'reconsideration' phase happened more often, until on one not far-off evening, she sat with her legs dangling off the bottom of her bed and stared at the wide open doors of her dresser. That was where she'd put together her little altar as part of how she worshiped the king. But the altar wasn't put together. Instead, her breathing was irregular, and a bit hoarse. There definitely was something building up inside her. I could see on her face how it was dawning on her that I was right, and before I expected it, she grabbed one of her shoes and launched it against the wall so strongly it tore through a landscape poster she had stuck onto the wall - the only one she had. And it didn't draw any attention at all. She saw it, but she didn't give a damn.

She got right up and opened the cupboard she had hidden her little statue in. Under angry grunts, she crammed out all the clothes and tossed them roughly onto her bed, but with so little regard where they landed, they landed everywhere, pulled out the little statue she had chiseled with her own hands and in a single fit of rage, tore off it's arms and horns, smashed it onto the ground and trampled it with her bare foot until it lay on the floor in bits and pieces. She got quite loud, and people on the pathways outside probably heard her, but what mattered to her most, was what she had done. And seeing it, she dropped back onto her bed with the torn-off horn still in her hand dropping onto the sheets, covered her face with her palms and broke down in tears. I had done it. She had come to grips with how stupid an idea she was obsessing over. There were just worlds between her and the king and the further she would have indulged in this all-defining fantasy of hers, the worse this was going to end.

In the days after that, she did leave the house, but only wander into the thicket or the swamp to punch holes into trees and rocks. And her absence didn't go unnoticed. On the royal training grounds, Asgore was always on the lookout for spontaneous assailants while he instructed recruits, inspected their technique or sparred with his old friend, the veteran Gerson. On the evening, when they were done and most of the recruits were heading home, he brought up Undyne in front of her old mentor. "* Say, the eager little tiderider that tries to land a blow on me every day, where has she been recently?"

"* Undyne?", the turtle was startled. "* Yeah, you're right. I'm getting worried, too. Better check with her before she goes back to being up to no good."

"* Tell her I miss her surprise attacks. If she continues the way she used to, she might actually hit me one day." The two of them had a good laugh and said their goodbyes. Gerson stumbled a lot less with his walking stick. He didn't really need it, but keeping a stance without it while fighting with his two-handed battle hammer at that was pretty strenuous and he preferred to relax after as tough a workout as when he met with Asgore. He made his way to Darkmarsh, but when he was at the door, he was surprised to hear what that little scallywag's mother had to say. "* Didn't you meet her at the training grounds?"

For a moment, he didn't realize what was going on, but caught himself still in time. He was getting old. "* No, I...I didn't go to the training grounds today. I thought I'd see her directly."

"* Well she isn't back yet. Do you want to come in and wait for her?" He figured that this was probably the best thing to do, came in and sat down to take a sip of the tea that the fish lady brought him. When Undyne came home, she looked absent. Or depressed. "* Hey!" , her mother called when she was passing by. "* You have a visitor." Her expression when she saw her mentor sit there was a mix of several things.

Gerson smiled. "* Hey there. How was training?" The immature teen was understandably startled and stared back and forth between him and her mother. "* What's wrong? Want to take a walk outside?" She agreed to that, Gerson put down the teacup and the two of them left, not to say a word until they were on their own and in the nearby forest. "* So? What's bugging you?" They were long-time acquaintances, and their time of coming along for whatever he was doing had forged a band of trust between them. That trust was why he lied to her mother about her. "* There something on your mind lately?" Undyne was very hesitant. In fact, she wasn't answering him at all. As far as I can guess, Gerson already had an idea of what was wrong. "* Fluffybuns says he misses your attacks. He asked me where you've been." Still no answer. "* Want to talk about it?" Her continued silence was wearing down on his patience. "* Is it about him?" This startled her enough to soften her expression and get her to look back at him at last. "* Oh please, I've been looking after young ones like you for centuries. Of course I can read you like a book."

She took her time to figure out what to say. And what to ask. "* Is he ever going to get over her?"

Gerson sighed. "* Who knows, he's a bit different. Four years are nothing. Not if you've got all the time in the world to find each other again." He pressed down on her shoulder and laughed. "* You barely even witnessed what they were like. Its a relief seeing him free from that." When he checked what she looked like, he realized he wasn't making it any better. "* Listen up. I know you're in that age. Your mind's running wild and I've heard them all. It's all the same after the first few. 'If I just want it hard enough, I can make it work', 'he looks broken, but he can change, he's just a bit of a fixer-upper', yatta, yatta, yatta. Girl your age gets all infatuated with a man in a position of authority over her, can't stop thinking about him, rejects anyone that's actually in her league, sucks up, because she thinks she can get him, and if nobody gives her a serious reality check, she's too old to find anyone before she knows what's what. Tell me if you've heard it before. I sure have so many times." This way and a in a few other ways, he could provoke an agitated reaction out of her and draw her into a long, long conversation that gradually had her open up and relax about it. By the time they were on their way back home, she was relaxed, calm and collected like I hadn't seen her in a long, long time. She continued what she did. Practise in the day, and occasionally stalking in the night, but nowhere near as bad as it had been. For a time, she had me worried, because this didn't make her practise with less intensity, but with more. She sparred more and more, got faster and faster and tried to strike at Asgore more and more often. In all the years she trained, she tried again and again, and it wasn't until another two or three years later, that she managed to throw a single attack at him that he failed to parry. For some reason I failed to understand, this was an event of major emotional importance to them. Their behaviour - moreso than Asgore's, Undyne's - changed after it. She had sort of accepted things beforehand, but she wasn't really content with life until then.

As for me, long before all those last bits happened, right after Gerson's one-man intervention was done and I was confident she was going to be an adjusted person from then on in, I went back to Papyrus to thank him for his help. It didn't even occur to me, until I was already half-way to looking for the next person that could catch my interest to see how I could improve their life. Or worsen it. But probably first improve it. I waited for another opportunity to catch him while Sans was practising knock-knock jokes. This time, he was working on a puzzle in Snowdin. Sure it was risky, but Sans was going to be busy for ages. "* And aren't you looking glorious as always?" He was overjoyed to see me.

"HELLO! HAVE YOU THOUGHT ABOUT TALKING TO HER YET?"

"* No...I sort of dropped that. Hey, I wanted to thank you for helping me. You really made someone happier."

"YOU'RE WELCOME. I COULD NEVER DENY HELP TO A FRIEND."

"* Yes...friend..." I had already prepared to move half-way out of his sight, when I changed my mind. It was getting time. Time to think about 'dying'. And this skeleton did consider himself my friend. If anything really bad happened, the only person I could rely on trying to get me involved, was him. If I retreated into the dark, far-off ruins, he would be the only person who even knew about me. "* Papyrus! Wait!" He was already on the way home to take a break, but luckily stopped before he way anywhere near sight for anyone else. I just made sure to be between the trees off the path. "* There's something I wanted to ask you."

"YES?"

"* We've been talking for what? Four years?"

"THAT IT MUST BE."

"* And did you never wonder how I knew what I knew? When kid almost got hurt, when old Dickson was at risk of falling off the cliff, when Halley was having a rough time and all those other times someone had problems and I always knew in time for you to help, do you never ask yourself 'how does he know'?"

It did get him thinking, but not for long. "YOU MUST HAVE A GOOD SENSE OF THINGS. THAT'S WHAT I LIKE ABOUT YOU. ALWAYS AWARE AND OBSERVANT! WE MAKE A GREAT TEAM."

"* Yes...a good sense..." Okay, what was I thinking? Telling him about my power? I couldn't do that, not if I was still intending for this timeline to continue. But to some capacity, I had to. "* But look. Maybe that won't happen at all, but what if I wasn't there to talk to you? What if there was no-one with this 'sense of things'? What would you do then?"

His overconfidence was faltering. His eye-sockets were 'looking past him', even though they were eye-sockets. "WELL I...NO, WHAT ARE YOU SAYING? YOU AND I ARE INVINCIBLE! PAPYRUS AND THE FLOWER!"

"* Sounds like a cartoon. But still. I might not be here forever. And if I ever stop appearing...look...I don't know if and when it will, but there might be a time when I'm gone. When I just stop appearing. I don't know what will happen, but if anything will, I want you to know something. I have a good sense of things, okay? Do you trust me?"

"OF COURSE!"

"* Then here's the scoop. If I ever stop appearing, and something really bad happens - as in really, really bad. Whatever happens, I need you to do whatever it takes to get to me. No matter what everyone else says, if things get really bad, ignore anything else and do whatever you need to do and try to get to me."

"WHAT ARE YOU SAYING?"

"* I'm saying that I might not be there to help, and if that happens, and something really bad happens, I need you to fetch me so I can make things better. I've got...ways. No matter how bad you think things get, I can always make it better again. Trust me with this. But to get to me, you need to know where exactly I'll be. If I ever 'stop appearing', there is one very particular hiding place I'll be at and I'm going to describe to you in detail, where that is and how to find it, so I'll need you to listen very closely and memorize every word I say."

* * *

For the human residents of Farfoot village within the new village called Shoneon, life didn't get much less strange than on the day that they came up here in masses just to celebrate what they built here. Even after everyone who wasn't to live here was long gone. Pretty much on the very next day, the king of the Monsters stopped wearing his royal attire and started digging up every patch of earth he could find and plant seeds in them, followed by walking across the entirety of the newly-expanded residences, even the old human ones and watering them. Every day. Toriel had had the builvers build an entire building to serve as a school for her, but because Monsters were as out of touch with human education as they were, she was going to have to dedicate the first year to bringing the children of all Monsters that were to go to school here up to par so she could start teaching them all at a few specific grades next year. This also allowed for time so that they -' they' meaning Alphys for the most part - could find out what paperwork and other procedures she needed to go through, so her school could be legally recognized as one. And beyond all this, even if Monster kept to their own, it was as if it was Halloween, but in the summer. And from what it seemed, forever. In the nights, ghosts - not children in simplistic ghost costumes as some of them first thought, gathered to float above the streets and jam together. Sometimes they played practised songs, sometimes they improvised with what they played on their instruments together for hours. While the ghosts didn't haunt the streets in the day, skeletons roamed them then instead. In fact already on the first day after the village was founded, when the new inhabitants were still moving back and forth between their old and new homes, carrying furniture and everything they needed to live and were in some cases aided by professional movers, the skeletons were doing as everyone else did and carrying piece by piece to the surface, loaded it into what little space Papyrus' new car had, and drove it to their new house to put it there.

They were carrying some kitchen utensils inside the first time. But when Papyrus opened the door, he dropped the unused toaster and blender on the ground. " **WHAT?** " There was no reason for the two of them to make this journey as often as he thought, because most of the furniture, including carpets, framed pictures and tables, was already there. Most of it was just dumped in some random place in the living room, but it was here nonetheless. "HOW? WHEN?"

With his hands in his pockets, the shorter one walked past him into the messy interior. "* looks like someone brought it all up here already."

"YES...BUT..." Papyrus rushed in, peeked into the kitchen and every room, to check if everything major was here. "...BUT HOW? WE WERE JUST HERE AN HOUR AGO AND IT WAS ALMOST EMPTY!"

"* someone musta brought it here for us. welp, looks like there's nothing to do the rest of the day."

"YES...SO IT WOULD SEEM..."

They continued to put everything that was here to it's appropriate place. And in this case, 'they' meant Papyrus did it and Sans just headed to their new back room and came back with a large, grey radio with two wide loudspeakers which could play music cds. "* hey, look what i found." Papyrus had hidden it under a trapdoor that was covered by the sofa in their old house. Them moving meant that Sans had an opportunity to 'find' it and Papyrus had none to hide it. When Sans turned it on, the unspeakably loud dubstep it played reminded him of why Papyrus went through the trouble of hiding it in the first place, so he turned it off.

"STOP GOOFING AROUND AND HELP ME WITH THIS." They still had a lot of work ahead of them.

Papyrus was just moving stuff aside, so he could spread the carpet. "* hey, didn't ya get an album to listen to?"

"WAIT...YOU'RE RIGHT!" Even Papyrus wasn't focused enough on this not to storm up into his room to check if 'the relocators' had brought it up here as well. And 'they' had. "WHAT A BETTER OCCASION FOR SOME GOOD RHYTHM TO WHAT WE DO!" He turned the volume down a lot, but then he was happy to have the beatbox and listen to the soundtracks and was perfectly fine with doing all the arranging by himself, while Sans either leaned against the wall or - once it was in it's place, sat on the sofa. When he was done, even with the other two rooms, he was still singing along with one of the songs he had on repeat - the last one on the disc. "THIS - IS THE TALE - OF OUR MAGNIFICENT MACHINE - AND WE HOPE YOU REMEMBER - WE HOPE IT WAS FUN..." He was interrupted when the bell rang. Sans didn't remember them having one, but they sure did have one now. "ON MY WAY, FAST AS THE WIND!" He half-way danced through the room, turning off the music on the way, before he opened the door. It was Undyne. "GOOD MORNING - NOT ANY...GOOD AFTERMORNING!"

"* Hey. Alphys is setting up the tv and her computers."

"PERFECT THEN."

"* Need some help with all this?"

"NO NEED! I WILL DO IT..."

"* actually. why not? not like ya've got much more coming up, right?" She wasn't objecting, so why pass up help that was coming their way? Together, and still without Sans' help, they got everything where it needed to be in no time. A few things were still missing and probably in the Underground though. Sans could do a lotta things, but there were limits.

"ASTOUNDING! AAAAAND..." He was about to get to what they were gonna do next. "I'VE GOT NOTHING. THIS IS ALL I WAS PLANNING ON DOING TODAY."

Undyne shrugged. "* I've still got plenty of time to kill."

Sans got up tapped his brother on the shoulder. "* hey, i got an idea. you're gonna need to know where there's gas stations around the place, so ya know where to stop when you're leaving."

At once, his brother was back at full livelihood mode. "OF COURSE! QUICK THINKING, SANS!" The two skeletons dashed upstairs. Sans to get some cds and Papyrus to get changed. The taller skeleton came back in his 'cool' outfit - probably in part because there wasn't gonna be much room in the back if he sat there with his full battle body - wearing a pair of sunglasses and with two more to hand to Sans and Undyne. "ONWARDS! TO THE PAPYRUS-MOBILE!"

Undyne raised an eyebrow while the three of them walked outside. "* Papyrus-mobile? Doesn't really sound right. How about...Papo-mobile?"

"SOUNDS TOO PAPERY."

"* Pyro-mobile?"

"TOO FIERY."

"* how about the coolsled?"

Sans' brother turned around to point at him. "THAT SOUNDS EXCELL - NO! YOU'RE NOT BRINGING THAT THING!" He was pointing at the beatbox, but Sans had brought some other stuff music-wise so it was more bearable for the other two. Music that was still pretty beat-heavy but much more melodious and catchy for people who didn't really dig house. He could understand that. Wasn't always his thing either, some of the stuff the humans dropped sounded like random noises randomly mashed together. Then again, anything humans made had to be garbage before it reached the Underground anyway. Sans sat in the back and placed the device on the seat next to him and turned it on. "WOW, THAT'S ACTUALLY NOT HALF BAD!" Sans turned the volume back up, as far as Papyrus allowed it, and they were soon setting off, slowly leaving the village while very loud music announced their presence to everyone around, the three of them wearing sunglasses and bobbing their heads or shoulders to the beat. Of course, this one time was just checking out where the nearest gas station to each of the village's exits was, but this activity - 'being cool' as Papyrus called it - the two skeletons and usually another passenger cruising around the village in the car, wearing sunglasses and with Sans' music turned loud enough to distract anyone from doing anything - became their thing from then on in. They wouldn't do it for long, but they'd do it almost once a day, and vary with who they took along. They talked Alphys into coming along, who tried to get into this as much as she could. They offered Asgore to give it a try at first, but when everyone saw what him getting on was doing, they figured it was probably best if boss monsters didn't get in this car. When Frisk came along to be taken a round around the block, they had Toriel run after them by foot for almost the entire length of a street, shouting to them about how this couldn't be good for the kid's ears, and nobody, not even Frisk, was bothered. Okay after no more than two seconds after they lost her, he was bothered after all and got out to go back to his 'Mom'. To top it off, Papryus parked the coolsled in front of the coolshed and took the glasses off his cool head.


	35. Itsy Bitsy

.

A Knight's Coolest Dish

Chapter 02

Itsy Bitsy

* * *

"The next oddity with the Whisperers relates to procreation."

"Oh god..."

"Calm down, I'm not going into those kinds of details. This is much more about their decision-making. Something people tend to forget with Whisperers is that despite their apparent civility, they still originated in the Southern Wilds, and thus come from an environment where one is subject to life-threatening dangers every day. One way, in which animals adapt to their environments faster, is through priority changes in selection. In their case, what that means is that due to their exposure first to the jungles to the south, then the constant danger coming from giant spider creatures in the parts of the Underground that they claimed for themselves, their females prioritize a person's capacity for survival over capacity for provision and are most attracted to that trait by far. And if they're in a particularly impressionable age, this goes even for people that aren't other Whisperers. Have a Whisperer watch you survive an attack by a deadly enemy, and you have her interest. Survive her trying to kill you herself, and you never get rid of her. She might pretend like there's nothing going on at first, but before you know, you have to expect her to be somewhere around you at any time. You just have not much of a way of knowing."

* * *

Tuffet tapped her daughter on the shoulder. "* And remember, if we're going up there, I need you on your best behaviour." She gave her a stern look. The kind of stern look a normal Monster wasn't capable of. "* No sneaking around, no running away or hiding, your pet stays at home and most of all - no biting, no killing. If anyone up here ever disappears, we might never be able to come up here again. If we survive. Did you hear me?"

Her daughter, properly dressed and her pigtails woven together flawlessly, remained as calm as was in order. "* Yes, mother."

"* Good, now show me where they moved." The two Whisperers trod along the path down the cliff, drawing the looks of anyone they passed by. Even after all the Monsters that came up here before them, five-eyed spider creatures were still a startling sight, and she made sure that her little Muffet stayed close to her. Monsters like herself and Muffet had ways that humans and other Monsters would find unsettling, disturbing even. Their everyday lives involved handling masses of murderous spiders, some small, some not quite so small, and so death was a much more intrinsic part of their lives, which was one reason they kept themselves mostly secluded from the parts of the Underground that weren't populated by pets or food. And ever since the Barrier was gone, Muffet would sometimes run off, to come home very late and sooner or later admit that she had gone to the surface. Which the lengthy spider had to presume was better than her bake sale parlour games beforehand. At least nobody died during her trips up here. Not to her knowledge at least, and her knowledge involved drawing from the memories of the spiders up here. Her little bakery games didn't remain so clean. She didn't dare to think about how many fell for that spiders-in-the-ruins excuse, and all the less about how many people rejected her pastries and found themselves becoming ingredients for new ones. Tuffet was pretty certain that it wasn't a good idea to leave girls her age unattended, whether in the Underground or up here, but Muffet insisted on paying a visit, and Tuffet knew it was probably going to be time for them to reclaim the spiders of the surface eventually anyway. What she could do, was to be there to make sure that Muffet wouldn't run off and do something both of them might regret. At the same time, if she didn't give in and follow through with her daughter's curiosity, she might lose control of Muffet, or Muffet would lose control of herself, doing who knew what as a result.

Muffet had already been up here once. At least once. Her mother wasn't sure, how many times she really had been up here. For her, this was the first time, so with her dress straightened out, her little baby boys Curd and Whey in peaceful slumber and secured on her back in a part of her dress made to hold them, she followed up as Muffet led the way. It was hard to get used to how bright the sun was shining and to resist directly looking at it to see what it looked like. And drawing attention from strangers the way she did was a bit unused too. Everywhere around, she caught people staring. She and her daughter could of course have made sure to stay out of people's sight, but she wagered that all the people here seeing them walk down the street and not one or two catching them crawl along the rooftops was better than to earn distrust in people like herself. When Muffet pointed at the house they were headed at, Tuffet examined her daughter to ensure that she was all prepared and set for their first proper visit to this human she kept sneaking away to find. The first time round, they got it wrong. And of all the people, it was the king himself that greeted them at the door. To Tuffet, it was like he was a different person from when she last saw him. Last time she had visited the castle and met him, he was tense, broken, restless and dressed for battle at all times. The current Asgore was visibly relaxed, dressed for a nice weekend and smiled when he opened the door and recognized her. They followed the directions he gave them and rang the bell of a house that looked exactly like the one Muffet had led them to. She was about to scold Muffet for leading them in a circle and expected Asgore to be the one that opened the door, but she was surprised to see they were exactly right on the second try. A familiar white-furred face appeared behind the opening door. "* Oh, greetings."

* * *

Frisk wondered who it could be on an early Saturday. Mom had been relentlessly tidying and cleaning up the already tidy and clean new house and made him do his share of the same. She was pretending like royalty was on the way, which was all the more strange, considering who she was and how she reacted when faced with actual royalty. He would later come to realize that she was always like that when expecting guests. When the door rang, he was all the more curious as to see who was going to visit them. His heart sunk when Mom opening the door revealed two long-legged spider creatures to stand behind it. Far away from whatever dark depths they usually crawled around in, out here, in broad daylight. "* Oh, greetings. Do come in.", Mom stood aside so Muffet in her usual adorned apparel, and her mother in a more modest dress that seemed to have holsters in the back for two babies of whatever these spiders were. Frisk quickly headed back to the living room to sit at the armrest of the new sofa and greet them from there. While he did so, he kept a close eye at the entrance from the front door, so Muffet couldn't sneak up behind him like she had in the Underground.

Only much, much later would he come to realize that she already had several times by that point. "* Hello, little one." The inhumanely tall woman greeted him and extended one of her lengthy purple arms to offer to shake his hand. She appeared to have a bit more self-control than Muffet. She then put her hands together, tilted her head to the side and gave him a look with her five, pitch black eyes closed and the corners of her mouth facing upwards. If this was her attempt at looking timid or cute, it wasn't working on him.

Things got all the worse when her daughter came around and sat down right next to him. "* I need a glass of water." Frisk got up, just in time telling from how he felt one of Muffet's little hands brush his shoulder as he left for the kitchen. Getting right up and walking past Muffet's mother didn't seem nearly as bad. When he came back, he had an excuse to sit down on the opposite sofa with a little table between him and the younger spider.

"* I've got to say, you all have it pretty nice up here." Mrs. Tuffet flashed a glance around the living room and out of the window. "* I was afraid it would be much worse."

Mom came back with a full cooker, a little mat to put it on and a teacup for everyone, which she filled. "* Yes, humans are not nearly as hostile than they're made out to be. They can be tiring, but they try to be nice." Mom smiled and went upstairs to fetch something.

While she was gone, Muffet sipped from her cup, her mother leaned forwards on the table and rested her head on her hands, with the long strands of pitch black hair hanging down on both sides. "* Say I heard there were Orcs up here. Any of them nearby that you know of?" The moment she mentioned those guys that were fought off twice by now, her otherwise invisible pupils flashed up.

"* Not any more?" He wasn't sure whether that was the right answer. Or the answer she wanted to hear.

Mrs. Tuffet sat back up. "* So it is true. There were Orcs up here. That means there must still be in other places." She leaned back, with her elbows supporting her so as not to squish the infants she was carrying and sighed. "* I'm starting to think we should get to moving up here. But now all the new houses are occupied. What a bother."

"* You couldn't make a living up here anyway.", Mom noted came back downstairs with a pile of printed-on cardboard boxes and put them on the table. "* Humans are very strict and demand you to be overqualified for the most simple tasks. If your child's education isn't at a human standard, it won't be possible." Frisk could tell from the tall spider's expression that she didn't like what she heard.

She changed the subject and ran her eyes along the boxes Mom had brought. "* And what are these?"

"* The humans from the old village gave me these. They assured me that this is what humans of all ages play." Which called into question why they would give them away. The object of their discussion was a collection of old board games. While Mom picked one up and slowly set it up for them to play, Tuffet spent their time asking her inane questions about life in the Ruins and during the entire time, Muffet was staring right at Frisk and occasionally sipping at her tea, until she ran out of it. What next happened scared Frisk so much, he braced himself to get ready for battle. Under the table, around the corner, from every nook and cranny and from all directions, even from within the very sittees they were all sitting on came hordes of tiny spiders crawling up on the table and into Muffet's teacup. Mrs. Tuffet slightly raised her voice to remind Muffet that they weren't at home and the moment she had, Muffet stopped 'drinking' the spiders, put down the cup and all the spiders that were left took off to crawl right back to where they came from. Frisk wasn't sure whether he preferred having seen them crawl into the piece of furniture he was sitting on and knowing that they were going to be there from here on in, to seeing the smaller spider get rid of them by drinking them.

"* Oh goodness, the children must be bored." Mom finished up setting up the first game the humans had given them. It was the board and all that belonged to a game of monopoly. Monopoly. The human snorted. He still struggled wrapping his head around the fact that the first visitors they would have in this new house would involve playing board games with purple, talking spiders. He had been wondering why Mom insisted that they took the time to go through the rules of these games, once she received them. Now that the guests to play them with were here, he could figure. Luckily, it went smoothly and with little interruptions. He didn't like how excited Muffet got about the fantasy of building an enterprise and competing others into bankruptcy by setting up traps and waiting for people to get caught in them. He could have sworn he saw her eyes flare up when his figurine landed on one of her roads. Sure enough, that game was done eventually, and he still didn't like the overjoyed look on his arachnid peer's face when it had come down to the two of them, and he had stepped in that deadly road she had woven that brought him to a fall.

Next up was a murder mystery game. Which the four of them more or less stumbled through, with Mrs. Tuffet asking all kinds of questions that somewhat related to the game, but that the game didn't answer the way she wanted them answered. After that, the next box involved a mat with coloured fields and randomized commands on who was to place which hand or foot on which colour. Mom didn't seem overly excited. And neither was he. He gave the spiders a stern look - not that they could likely tell - up and down their long arms and legs, not to mention how many of the former they had. "* Well that's hardly fair.", he commented. Mom was relieved when Mrs. Tuffet chuckled and agreed to skip that game. The last game involved knowledge of all kinds of trivia on the surface, which understandably none of them had too much of, not even Frisk. And even when it came to trivia on things that dated back to before Monsters were banished, Mom insisted that most of the 'correct' answers weren't correct at all. In the end, they came around to playing another game of monopoly, and the second time round, their reactions to what happened were less unsettling for the only human here. Overall, the day was more entertaining than he liked to admit, and when he exchanged glances with their guests during the awkward silence that always came when it was time to go, he realized that he had gotten used to seeing their faces, with their black, unreadable eyes and their deadly fangs sticking out of their mouths - okay, maybe he hadn't really gotten used to them. But it had gotten better.

They were soon back at the front door, saying their goodbyes. "* Thank you for having us over, see you some time.", the mother of the two said during their departure.

When Mrs. Tuffet was already turning around to take her leave, Muffet did as she did and waved them goodbye as well. Frisk couldn't be sure, but there was something strange about how she said goodbye to them. "* See you, Deary.", she mused. Better if not. But he didn't say that, he instead reciprocated the waving and the 'see you's until they were finally gone. It was over.

"* She's a nice one, this Muffet." Mom placed a hand on Frisk's shoulder and smiled. "* Don't you think so too, my child?" No he didn't. He didn't say that he didn't, but she could tell whether he wanted her to or not. "* What is wrong, my child?"

She tried to kill him because someone offered her some money for it. She tried it many, many times and it wasn't rare that she succeeded. He had to redo her fight again and again, because if he got hit a single time, the venom would often kill him by the time he mustered the determination to restore himself and SAVE. He redid the fight against her so many times, he eventually memorized her so perfectly, he refused to purchase any pastries, even in the ruins, just to stay in practise in regards to dodging her attacks. Every single one. Flawlessly. Every time. But he couldn't tell her any of that, so he went with: "* Nothing, I'm just a bit afraid of spiders, that's all." Sure, he still couldn't shake the thoughts of all the spiders of which he now knew they were there and he couldn't sit on a piece of furniture without being aware that there were at least a dozen of them crawling around inside it, but at least the big, talking ones were gone. At least he had the relief that he had seen the last of those two in particular.

On the next Monday, class was to be in session again. There was no discussion on that. Mom was a warm and caring mother at home, but a harsh mistress in the classroom. She couldn't run an entire school all on her own of course. But she didn't need to. There weren't that many children that were sent here at least as early as this. The number was small enough for her alone to manage. As of yet. And she couldn't officially run it, even if she had the staff for it. What she could do, was to prepare Frisk and all the Monster children from Shoneon village and parts of the Underground that were near the castle, for when she had the legal authority to teach and hand out federally approved school reports. Most others were minding their own business, as everyone sat in their seats, waiting for Mom. Kid to Frisk's right was gnawing at his desk. The human was a bit squeamish. What was keeping Mom? He was about to ask a few others, but before he could, she came inside and went over to her desk, where she had placed her bag already. "* Good Morning, children."

"* Good Morning Mrs. D." Her old family name started on a 'D' as well, so she let it slide when some of them meant to say 'Dreemurr' and abbreviated it. Others addressed her by 'your highness', one of which earned themselves a glare from her by doing so.

"* Before we begin today, I would like to introduce two newcomers." He already had a bad feeling and was being a bit queasy ever since she left the classroom after they had arrived, but this bad feeling was getting worse by the second and proved justified when he saw who those newcomers were. Either still or again with her usual, high-effort clothing, same dress, same pigtails, same ribbon, same shoes, the same cold, heartless eyes, the same fangs that could kill whoever they dug themselves into, in came Muffet, one of the two exact people he hoped this wouldn't be. Her mother and Mom must have had another conversation over the weekend. She greeted the class and was greeted back. Frisk put a polite pretense of excitement, but he really, really didn't welcome them at all. As expected, she was followed by her mother, wearing a thin, white dress and still with her infants on her back. "* Next, say hello to Mrs. Glasbury. She will help me tutor you for this year." In a held-back and timid fashion the taller spider came in with slow, but far steps and waved at the well-meaning class that greeted her. A cold shadow ran down Frisk's side as Muffet passed him to get into one of the empty seats in the rows behind his. They proceeded with classes as usual, with the children being given new material, problems to solve with it and with Mom and Mrs. Tuffet walking around between the tables to help the students.

This didn't last forever to his relief. Eventually Mom's already set-up school bells rang to bring in the big break of the day. He would have quite some time to settle down so he could get through the second half of the day. Mom had made him lunch, which he accepted early on, because she would lose sight of him not before long. This was certainly one of those days, where he wouldn't exhaust himself during the only real break he had, by playing games with the other children. He had something else in mind for today. He retreated to his little corner a little further down the outside wall from the back door. There, behind a few hedges and bushes that Dad had unwittingly placed there, he sat down and pulled out his phone. For a moment, he put it away and hesitated. Everyone he could see, he could only see through branches and leaves and on top of them being obscured, they were pretty far away. Nobody was here, but he had this feeling again. Like he couldn't think out loud, because someone would be listening. Like he couldn't really relax, because someone was watching. "Muffet?" For all he knew, she was right behind him again, watching, listening. Like how she was in the Underground, on the first day when the barrier was broken. He knew that if she was here, turning around wouldn't work. He faced away from the wall and slowly moved backwards step by step. By the time he was with his back against the edge of the outside window sill, he didn't stop, grabbed around behind his back for whatever he could find without looking and made sure that short of her shrinking herself, it was impossible that she was behind him. It appeared like he was alone after all.

Which meant it was time for him to move on to why he was here. He opened a messaging application on his phone to send a message to Sans. Within a minute, he showed up next to him. He was bringing him a book. 'Pick-up lines: A Compendium' The book Sans had gifted him and was trusted to keep for until Frisk had a good place to hide it or could justify having and reading it in front of Mom. There was only a pretty short time frame in which he had any chance at safely reading it, and among other opportunities, that time frame was now. "* ya know, sooner or later, you're gonna have to tell tori or find another way." He couldn't though. He was pretty sure she would notice if it showed up in his room, or anywhere else in the new house for that matter. And with how protective she was, she probably would say something to the effect of it not being appropriate for someone his age.

There were many points in the Underground where he came to appreciate having learned a thing or two from the book, and the person who showed it to him. Sitting down here and memorizing all the little one-liners was his way of unwinding. As quickly as Sans had appeared, he walked around a corner and disappeared again, leaving him alone with the compendium. He spent quite a bit of time sitting there, reading one after the other aloud, until he got to the point where he was trying to make up some of his own. "* Wow, it got dark fast, oh wait, it's just your eyes."

"* Ahuhuhu, thank you." A cold shock took hold of him and he almost jumped away. Okay he didn't almost jump away, he fell to his side opposite to where this came from, landing with his right side in the growing flowerbed. A now giggling spider girl sat right next to where he was just sitting and gazed down at the terrified human with her mouth covered by one of her hands. She was so close to him, they must have been touching until he heard her, but he hadn't noticed a thing until she spoke up. "* Why so scared?"

Very slowly and without taking an eye off her for even a moment, he sat back up. "* How long have you been here?"

Muffet giggled again. "* Long enough." When he sat back up, he was still shaky and nervous, but he had a moment to think about the situation. If she had seen the book, she knew his secret. Unless he took this as an occasion to LOAD and redo an entire week all over again, he was at her mercy. He needed her not telling on him. So one hope of his, was that she wasn't aware of how important it was. He was seriously considering LOADing, but he only ever saved when all seven of them, him, Mom, Dad, the skeletons, Undyne and Alphys were together. He had to learn to do things without reLOADing to make everything absolutely optimal. Another thought crossed his mind. She must have been here - as close to him as she apparently was - for quite a while, yet he was alive and well. He sat back against the wall and held the book wide open in her direction, offering her to come closer and read it with him. She took him up on his offer and came closer again, but now, he was aware that she was there.

"* Uh..." Directly talking to her seemed to startle her a bit in spite of everything. "* Could you keep this as a secret? Between the two of us?"

She gave him as friendly a smile as was possible with a face like hers, turned the page around for the two of them to continue and answered: "* Sure, Dearie. Whatever you say." The words weren't giving him confidence, but the upwardly tone in her voice was. They spent what was left of the big break reading it together, sometimes even making up own ones, this time with Muffet helping him tweak and rephrase them, and before long, it was time to contact Sans and give the book back to head to class. At least as far as anything she said, Mom didn't know, but he did notice a somewhat unusual smile on her face when he came back. As time went on, and the two spiders kept coming to school every day of the week, Mom turned out to be right about something she said about him and what he thought of spiders. It did get better. He did get used to them, their appearances, the way they acted and he got used to being increasingly aware that any time, any place, for all he knew, Muffet could be watching him. The only things that really worried him were a few obvious questions. For how long had she been sneaking around up here? What else did she possibly know about him from listening when he thought no-one did? In the beginning, it worried him, but as he spent more time with them, by meeting them every day of the week, those thoughts turned from worries into reasons to have a little faith in them, seeing as if Muffet knew some things, she appeared to be good at keeping them to herself and it gave him the faint feeling of having another person he shared his thoughts with.


	36. The Final Pasta

.

A Knight's Coolest Dish

Chapter 03

The Final Pasta

* * *

When Sans made his way to Alphys' place, she was alone in the basement, sitting in front of the computer. The door to the mostly unlit room she was sitting in wasn't closed and she didn't notice when he came in. Of course, she couldn't be expecting him, seeing as their front door was probably locked and she believed she was the only one here. Potato chips, peanut curls, chocolate bars, processed meat from a fast food chain, dip to flavour it, and a lot of other fatty foods had their empty boxes scattered across the table that her two screens were on, and her pajamas that she was wearing in the middle of the day, were smeared in half of it. Sans decided not to announce his presence and see how long it would take for her to notice. He instead came closer to stand beside her and far behind enough not to be in her field of vision. She was reading texts from both screens at the same time, and didn't notice him until she sighed, leaned back and noticed him in the reflection of one of her empty potato chip packages. The lizard squeaked, gripped the side leans of her chair, drew far away from him and needed a few seconds to slowly settle down from hyperventilating within a moment's notice. "* Oh g-g-god S-sans don't do that."

"* pretty deep into reading this stuff, aren't ya?"

She covered her face while she was still calming down from that little shock he had given her. "* How did you get here?"

"* the door was open."

"* It wasn't. You know I check for that."

"* there's a shortcut."

Alphys raised what she had for an eyebrow. "* Into this house?"

Sans grinned and narrowed his eye-sockets. "* yes..."

The lizard relaxed, leaned back into her seat and sighed. "* You can walk through walls, can't you?"

Close enough. He shrugged. "* kinda sorta. while we're at that, i'm gonna need your help."

And as expected, he startled her enough to turn around to him with her chair. "* W-what? Now?"

Sans put his hands back in his pockets and faced the screen. "* why? you got anything important going on?" The currently open window was her browser, and it had the bar of both screens filled to the brink in open tabs. So much so, that you could barely see the logo of any site she was visiting. She must have been doing this for hours, which was impressive considering it was only noon. He recognized some of the logos from Papyrus' computer when they were all on about college. A lot of the others were the same one. The one of that website that Alphys kept visiting that Papyrus didn't like. "* huh, doin' some more 'opinion research' are we?"

She slowly turned back to the computer and brought her hands back to mouse and keyboard. "* Uh - y-yeah?"

"* so what're they thinking recently?"

"* Why don't we check?" Alphys went all the way to the side on the right screen until she found one particular tab, that belonged to an endless discussion thread on them. 'Monsters General - Sheriff goes Moonface Edition', with a title image of Asgore coming back in red-smeared armor, taken when he was facing all these Orcs on his own, disappeared and then was the only one to come back, as well as a few edits that involved photoshopping a cloggy white crescent-moon-shaped face with sunglasses onto Asgore's head. Another edit had a strange man with a cowboy hat, a red armband and a gun in his hands walking along side by side with him.

"* so uh, what's with that moon face thing?"

This had her sweating at once. Either she had something to do with it, or it was a touchy subject. But a quick glance at her while she briefly scratched the back of her head had Sans immediately know that it was the latter. "* That's uh...from music. Yeah. Music." It made her nervous, so he glossed over whatever that was about. Instead, he had her scroll further down to see what they were talking about. Their discussions about Monsters mostly went in a loop between two things. One of them was showing off edited photos from the big day when the new village was founded, which were turned mostly into small images that conveyed non-verbal facial cues that you couldn't get across in plain text. The other was them getting excited and pondering what Asgore was going to do next. From how things kept getting brought back to him, humans were really, really fascinated with their king. At least the ones here were. And not just that. Maybe he wasn't supposed to be, but he was surprised that they had an idea of what had happened.

It was still only a few days ago. Just a day before the big day, that an army of Orcs showed up just outside of the new settlements. Their king had insisted on facing them alone, and for everything that happened after that, they just had to take his word for it, so who knew what really happened. All that everyone else knew, was that he and the Orcs disappeared, and only he came back, with his armor all dirty and full of blood. Monsters and local human villagers still had the edge that came with having seen this with their own eyes. But Sans was surprised to see that somehow - prolly just by process of elimination, these random humans from all over the place, who had no access to anything about this except pictures and footage that made it's way across the internet, figured out that Asgore's meetup with those dark guys didn't end so well for the latter. Which had to mean that this 'moonface' name probably implied something similar to - it was still hard to get used to thinking about this so casually - brutal mass slaughter.

"* so they picked up on what happened."

"* Yeah." The doctor sighed in memory of her relief when Asgore came back and their existential fears were blown away by means not known to most of them. "* I'm still confused. Why won't he tell us what happened?" Asgore did tell Sans, but only after a long conversation that consisted mostly of the two of them talking past each other, until Sans picked up on what was going on and signaled that he knew about the Temmies and the little act that they played.

Which brought him to why he was visiting her in the first place. "* ya know, i've been thinking." Once he had the lizard's attention and she had taken her eyes off the screen to face him, he continued. "* whatever happened, we probably really dodged a bullet. i wanted to take my time with this, but..."

He hesitated, Alphys needed to break the silence for him to go on. "* What?"

"* remember what i said about me training? yeah...there's a faster way. a more effective way. i think, at least. but i'm gonna need some help for this one." Without a word, Alphys pointed at herself with a questioning look. "* you've already seen enough of the assembly chamber, right? how'bout you get to see another machine in action?" He sighed, but he couldn't keep stalling. Not when all Monsters' lives were on the line like that. He really didn't want to do what it seemed like he had to, but circumstances were forcing him to act yet again. If a similar emergency happened, he needed to be at his full power. "* think you got some time for another trip there?"

Bad premonitions aside, this had Alphys' eyes widen, and slowly, her mouth opened up for a very big smile. "* Y-Yes! Yes! Any time! Let me just close all this." She didn't even make any efforts to finish up whatever she was doing in all these tabs, she just closed it all at once, turned the computer off and got ready to go. Sans shrugged off her enthusiasm and made for the way out of this place. They hadn't been down there in a while. Alphys was shaking with anticipation, and slightly jumping in place while following him. Her curiosity as to what all the stuff down there was, musta been killing her. She almost forgot to lock the door on their way out. Her and Undyne's house was pretty far out, all the way in a corner of the village, so it was a long enough way to get to the center, and from there to the path up to the entryway to the Underground. It gave him a good opportunity to keep an eye out for several things though.

Here and there, they came by some Monsters that wanted to make use of the sunny day, but usually didn't have an awfully good idea of what people did up here to spend their time. The human villagers kept to themselves mostly. That was okay. As long as everyone made sure of that, Monsters would gradually earn their trust. As for visitors to walk past them, they really kept to the straight path to the lab, so they only came by one family of bunnies that were probably looking to take a short trip for sight-seeing. Things really had grown calm. Word about all the troubles with the surface must have gone around, just like it had to. One surprising development was that stands - traditional market stands - seemed to have opened within the MTT Resort's main hall. It was probably the sheer demand, coming from Monsters visiting the area above, the Resort was turning back into the bazaar. At least a bit.

In the upper lab, when they first came in, the lights were off. After Alphys had moved to her new place completely, the hall was more empty than it had been in a long, long time. And the doctor started calming down, when they got into the lift, she could already feel the eeriness of the ground floor they were headed to. They were going to go to the part she knew how to get to, followed by him taking her to the other levels via his teleportation. While the two of them tried not to fall over during the bumpy ride down, he pondered why he didn't just fix the dial of the lift, and allowed her to get to the rest. He wasn't sure himself. Either he was trying to keep the rest of the Underground sheltered from the things that were in this giant, untouched complex, but he had the feeling that deep down, he was still hoping the Doc would - somehow - exist again and find everything the way he left it.

In a similar vein, he was hoping for something else. He remained silent during most of their trip, all that there was in terms of talking, was Alphys voicing her excitement again from time to time. He was thinking about something he had spotted when he was here with Papyrus. At the same machine he used. The same machine he dreaded being used. The machine that - after a quick 'short cut' from the shower room in the bottom floor, stood before the two of them. The adaptation workbench. The Doc had built it to give skeletons like Sans special powers. But it was so very painful. To this day, he didn't get how his brother could suffer through it, without minding it that much. The fact that he could use it in the first place always made him think. The Doc was gone. Everything resembling him too much disappeared. Whenever he would tell someone about it, they would quickly forget not just about him, but about Sans telling them about him. Yet this place was still here. Beyond that, this machine was still here. And it still worked. Sure, everyone remembered some weird version where Sans was the Doc for a long time, but still. What the Doc had created, what existed as physical objects - his equipment - his inventions - his time machine - it all somehow remained.

The lizard stayed behind but squeed when she saw him turn on the lights and power it up, and ran to his side to get a look at the giant screen. Here, when he last used it, he had spotted something. It had been years, but when looking again, it turned out he didn't remember that wrong. The Doc had left behind another 'power', that he never talked about. It was just listed as 'GN 1.81', but the image of it's icon made clear that this was it, as it depicted an eye-socket. Sans' eye-socket. And the blue iris that was shining from within it, looked different from what his own G-Nerators looked like. Another cold shower went down his spine, when he noticed that when he selected it for further information, it turned out there was another option to choose from. A merely cosmetic one, where the light of the iris would shine not in blue, but in orange. If the blue one was for Sans, the orange one - the Doc was planning on putting Papyrus through this either way.

The skeleton shook his head. Even if so, he had to go through with this. At least if it was what he thought it was. Luckily, the file he had access to here, also contained all the Doc's notes on it. Upon quickly reading down all of it at the speed he was capable of, he saw that he was right. In the course of a century, the Doc had occasionally gone back to make improvements on his G-Nerators. To improve the efficiency, the safety of it's use, and it's power output. This was his unused, new and improved version of what Sans already had. What calmed him down about the notes' contents, was that while Sans was listed as it's author, the sentence structure and the choice of words very clearly were the Doc. And according to what he read, the simulations were already finished and successful. This new and improved version had been finished, long before the Doc took off and disappeared. So maybe he had changed his mind about this. Or maybe he didn't want to bring it up unless he thought that Sans and Papyrus were ready for it. Well ready or not, it was intended in case there was trouble related to the surface, and that can of worms had been popped open with no way of closing it again. Every cold and rational thought in him led to the same conclusion. He had to use it. It was barely enough to keep him fully going when he was facing off with Frisk, when he was going completely crazy. And that - sure, determination and all - but that was still just a little kid.

The silence that had fallen for quite a while, was eventually broken by the curious visitor. "* It - it's you. A-a-all of this. What is this?"

Of course she wouldn't get it immediately. Sans closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and then let go of the controls to address her. "* i told ya i was fast, right? really fast. you think that's normal? you think there's like a whole village or two, just full of skeletons with super powers, and somehow, nobody knows about 'em?"

Alphys didn't move. She was frozen, and lost in thought. "* I, uh...", she paused to give all the little icons, numbers and opened up text documents a closer look. "* I never really..."

"* thought about it. yeah." If she ever knew, she forgot, because everyone forgot. She forgot because knowing involved knowing about the Doc. "* that musta been it." There was no hope in telling her about him. Every time he told someone, they forgot. Mere seconds after telling them, it was like the very conversation they were just having had never happened. "* either way, this is a machine that gives a skeleton powers." Without the hint of a smile, he nodded towards the bed in front of the main computer. Very bare, and covered in - by now - sheer unbreakable straps, made to restrain whatever or whoever was tied up with them. If you weren't aware that it all had specific purposes, you'd think it was a torture chamber. A large, clean torture chamber with other inventions built up in the distance. He dreaded the thought of using it again. This machine - there weren't many things around that really scared him, but this thing had a cold grasp on his spine whenever he thought about it. He swallowed - however a skeleton could swallow - his fears and went on to point at the GN one point eight one. "* that's why we're here. the stuff i can do - there was a point when it almost wasn't enough. if there's more trouble waiting where these orc guys came from, i'm gonna - i'm gonna need that."

The lizard went around the huge screen to see the bed, surrounded by panels and unused alteration tools, some of which could be seen, some of which couldn't. "* Oh god...t-t-that looks..."

"* painful? yeah. that's 'cause it is." After one more deep breath, he started making all the adjustments on the console that were needed. He had to take it the way Papyrus had. If it had to be done, it had to be done. He had to do it like his brother, and just think of all the stuff he could hopefully do when this was all over. Without a word, he stepped forward, got up on the bed and started applying the cuffs to his wrists and calves. Once that was done, and his arms and legs were stretched out, he had Alphys help him with the additional securing. "* right, so then we better get going." he announced. Alphys was understandably unsure about all this, but she obliged and went back to the console. "* no. it's that." With what little movement his skull was capable of, he nodded towards the large, impractical lever right next to the console. "* that's where you turn it on. i'm gonna need you to keep it on until it's over, no matter what i say. if you stop it before, things get really dangerous. better not go there to begin with." He probably had to be thankful that Alphys had picked up on the mood, and her euphoria had made way for a gloomy silence.

When she pulled the lever, nothing happened. "* Uh..."

"* it's voice activated. like everything. you've gotta laugh like a crazy person. think mad scientist."

She was all the more unsure about it after that, and it took two more tries until the dreaded machine went on. He always convinced himself that he'd get used to it, after having been through this more than once, but he never did. The intensity and seeming endlessness of it surprised him over and over again, every time. He just focused all self-control he could muster into not wrecking the whole place in an involuntary use of what he could already do. At least once he failed, and unleashed a flurry of giant bones to smash holes into the walls all over the room. Good thing they only struck into the high-up areas of the hall, far above both the console, the screen, and both major machines that this hall was dedicated to hosting. The same additional surges of pain that only creeped into one eye, the first time the Doc used this on him, was now filling both his eyes, and he was already overcome with relief, when he felt the pains of his body getting changed and rewritten slow down, until they ended completely. He had consciously held on throughout the whole ordeal. When the last sparks from the retracting satellite dishes were fading out, he glanced over to the console, behind which a confused and terrified doctor was cowering and peeking at him with only one eye. Other than half her head, everything of her was hidden away. After one more sigh of relief, he told her that it was over, had her release his arms and hands, rubbed his skull to shake off the remaining vertigo and asked for the mirror that the Doc kept here.

He could already feel this unimaginable amount of power course through him, but it took Alphys heaving up that mirror on her back to carry it to him, him easily picking it up and holding it over himself with one hand, and looking into it, still lying on his back. His eyes had changed. His old G-Nerator used to just be a light that flickered between blue and yellow. Now, he could see so well, he could see the tiny runes spinning at an unfathomable speed in the irises, both of which were gleaming with a clear, blinding blue, accompanied by faint smoke coming out of the edges of his eye-sockets. It musta been a success. "* i think it worked."

"* So...uh - what is it supposed to do?" She was standing at his side, still worried about all of this. Sans hung the mirror down on the opposite side and let it fall on the floor. He had held it a bit too tightly with his thumb, and broken it. Pieces were falling off his hand, when he dropped it. "* Is it...is it something with your eyes? Like a beam or something?"

"* nah, nah..." It was only when he was sitting up now, that he noticed how his clothes were all messed up."* Woah, better get myself a new set of these." A quick teleport to his room on the surface and back later, he was dressed up as if nothing had happened.

It took him doing that right in front of her for Alphys to realize what the shortcuts were. "* Ah, so you can just..."

"* zap myself wherever i like? yeah."

He could see from her expression, that this made her realize a lot of things. "* Oh, t-then where are we? I mean this sure is not behind some shortcut I didn't know of, right?"

"* an elevator with lotsa buttons, but only one of 'em leads somewhere."

The implications of what he just said made her back off with a confused look on her face. "* B-b-but those..."

"* yep, each and every one of 'em. that's how big this place is. some of it's scattered across a few places, but yeah, it's that big."

Her excitement was coming back, and she had trouble standing still. "B-but t-t-then - so many rooms - so many things! Why didn't you tell anyone?"

He could tell her, but - no, this time, he was gonna. It wouldn't last, but he was gonna do it anyway. He shrugged off his usual complacency opened his eye-sockets to get a clear look at her, and outright told her. "'* cause this stuff all belongs to w. d. gaster, and i'm not sure where he is." Silence followed. He knew how this would go. He would be able to watch in real time how the memory of him just saying that to her, would vanish from her memory, and after a few seconds, she'd pretend like he hadn't given her an answer at all. And there it was coming along, but while her facial features eased up, he couldn't keep sight of her, because the main light above, the only one illuminating this place, was flickering. "woah there, guess i've gotta fix that." After a few seconds of struggling to remain on, the main lights were back on as if there were no trouble. Maybe an electric irregularity or the wires getting worn? Who knew, he was gonna resolve that later.

"* Fix what?" He turned back to the doctor, who was still tapping in place, eager for him to tell her. "* So? Why is all this a secret?"

His shoulders dropped and he sighed. Even this was denied to him. "* there's reasons. just take it for what it's worth." After that, the lizard shrugged together and calmed down just a bit. She was probably itching to see more, and he'd have to show her more to keep her quiet. But for the time being, the next thing on the list was to test out this new pair of irises he got. "* so these two things..." He pointed at his G-Nerators. "* are like powerplants, but really small, really strong and really efficient. that's where i get magical power and can turn it into speed, strength, what have you. and while we're at that." He shortcutted back and forth to get her a chair and a table. "* you mind giving me a minute to test 'em? want something to eat in the meantime?" She was impatient, he could see that, but she agreed and sat down. He had to go to the temporal suspension chamber where emergency supplies were stashed. All the stuff in the fridge he could long throw away. It was probably high time he got around to doing that.

On the surface, he set out to jog along the road out to the city, but took the opposite route. He preferred to steer clear of obstacles. Highways and open roadways were the best bet for that. And for the time being, he would go by foot. He started off slow, at speeds still imaginable as ordinary human ones. Then, once he was past the first neighbouring town, he accelerated and little by little, used these two new toys to the max, at least he intended to, but at some point when he had lost count of the towns and cities he must have crossed, and was probably in a different county, possibly even crossed a national border, he had to stop and speed around a corner between apartment buildings. He had caught on fire. He had to put it out, take out all the important stuff and keep it separated. His blue hoodie was messed up, with a big, brittle spot on the right side. He checked his own ribcage for anything, but it seemed to only affect what he was wearing. The Doc had sure accounted for everything. A quick look at his cell phone made it clear to him though, that for him to have left the country, the world would have to be a lot smaller than it really was. While he sat there, thinking on what to do next, he figured at some point in the future, he would travel around, maybe with Papyrus. See a lot more of the surface world than that little coastal area they settled in. But there wasn't much time to slack off. Way back, Alphys was waiting after all. He wrapped it all together, and as precisely and quickly as he could, used a map application on his cell phone to identify his locations and teleported his way back home in big steps by zapping high up in the air and then across great distances. It required a lot of practise, teleporting himself in opposing angles over and over again, to not gain too much momentum in either direction from the earth's gravity, but this was all basic stuff he had gotten down a long time ago.

One quick stop at home for another set of clothes later, he arrived back at the lab, where she was startled by him appearing again. "* So uh...is it good?"

"* lets me go pretty damn fast. but i got a new commission for you." Sans threw a fourth set of what he always wore next to the table. He had a whole assortment of these identical yet peculiar outfits by now. "* i go too fast, my clothes catch fire. you think you can make a replica of all this that's fireproof?"

"* O-okay?" After this, they soon got to heading back to the assembly chamber to get her started. After all she'd done before, he had to show her some of the less major stuff that was lying around down here.

* * *

The formerly green and lively landscape was devastated as it was, but their battle was far from over. Shinya, a knight in blue, his regalia already in tatters, floated above the expanses of green fields and swaths of uprooted chunks of ground, wiped a bit of dirt off the smaller, still drawn blade and listened to his opponent. An abnormally muscular man, wearing nothing but a pair of broad trousers and a golden ring around his neck. He had deep red skin and horns protruded his head, surrounded by a thick mane of black hair. "* Pathetic human! Is that all that you can muster? Let me show you true power. The power of the Demon King! Haaagh!" The Demon King, several hundred meters away, yet somehow in hearing range as if he was right next to him, screamed, clenched his fists and tensed his muscles. He started brimming so much with pure energy, it surrounded him as a visible and audible red aura and burned all around him like a flame. His scream turned louder and louder, and the red mist around him shrank again and turned more and more solid, until he was completely enveloped in a perfect sphere of this red energy. Only a few flares spun around it and shun in a few very narrow directions, yet in those directions, they shun as far as the eye could see. Eventually, the flares stopped as well and the sphere was completely sealed to the outside, while it shrank further to be just a bit more than the Demon King's original size.

The previously bright, blue sky was quickly covered in dark, stormy clouds, bolts of lightning struck the ground in several places and the sphere was changing. It started glowing in a bright, firey orange, before it exploded. The sheer force of that explosion and the winds that followed almost blew the already pretty strong spectators that were watching from over half a kilometer of distance, off the ground. The subsequent burst of fire didn't completely shroud who was inside, and the smoke it left behind slowly faded away to reveal glances of the centre of this explosion. His horns were less rounded and reached straight up from both sides of his head. His now much smaller and thinner body was covered in pitch-black skin, his pupils had vanished out of his eyes completely, leaving them only with their soulless white and the lengthy tail of a bull hung off his backside, the hair at it's end was glowing in the same bright orange as the long and full mane on his head. He spoke now with a whole choir of voices at once, with no-one to speak but himself. The voices of all his previous forms, the new one being a calm, younger sounding one. "* Face the power of a Demon King and despair!"

In a display of his physical strength, the Demon King flexed his seemingly smaller muscles. The sheer physical force involved in that, caused a pressure wave great and strong enough to press a crater right into the ground below him. He pulled something out of his new set of blue trousers. A rock or gemstone, transparent and blue. "* Pure Zephyrium, five hundred times the strength of solid diamond!", he announced. With the fingers of the hand that was holding it and not much effort at that, he crushed the gemstone into pieces and let the shards fall to the ground.

Shinya was already worn down from what it took to injure the Demon King's last form. In silent accord with one another, the two of them floated higher up in the air. Shinya knew, he would need to use that particular sword to win this battle. The blade of the gods that he hadn't used in years. It would multiply his strength and give him the power he needed. While bringing his hand closer to the grip of the curved sword on his back, he whispered the words to prepare to unleash it. "* Thy slumber be gone, thy thirst be sated and thy power be released!"

* * *

"* And that's where the last episode ended." With this, Undyne finished up her colourful description, leaving a confused skeleton on the other side of the sittee.

"OKAY..." Papyrus paused, because he struggled to make any sense of what she had been describing for the last ten minutes. "...SO...WHAT OTHER THAN THAT HAS SHE BEEN TALKING ABOUT?" He was referring to Alphys, who had spent the last few days huddled up in the basement of their new home. Papyrus insisted that it was irresponsibly lazy to just assume that they were practically on a several-week holiday in regards to doing anything on the surface.

"* Oh, about that, see, we can't do much. She found out she may be able to get us into some physical prep if she got together with Asgore to work out an exception, but that'll still take a while. And even what we could do then doesn't have much to do with what we're doing when it matters. We're gonna have to sit tight."

"I SEE." The skeleton's eyes narrowed. It felt like she was getting to something else and was trying to brush over what he thought was more important.

"* But there's something she thought was a good idea for you if you could - wait, how did she say it? Broaden your horizons?" Undyne pulled up a flier. The header read 'Vino's Kitchen' and there were a few weekly times printed on the back. "* It's for cooking classes. What Alphys told me was 'If he likes making pasta, this is where he should go'. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's what she said. You should really give cooking a chance." She nodded and had a bit of an unsure look on her, as if she was trying to convince herself, more than Papyrus.

Not very convinced, he nodded and asked: "COOKING?"

"* Anything but police work, actually."

Papyrus gave the flier another close look. "PASTA YOU SAY - BUT YOU'RE ALREADY GIVING ME COOKING LESSONS FOR FREE. THIS COSTS MONEY." He pointed a the prices listed below the little timetable.

Undyne couldn't help but laugh. "* Oh right, I do. Don't I?" Once she was serious again, she put the piece of smooth paper on the lean between them and started tipping on it. "* That guy's a professional. I can teach you how to cook." This was a lie and she knew it was one. She just had to sell it to him however she could. "* He can teach you how to really cook." When she saw that she had his attention, she went on with more confidence. "* This is the next level of culinary expertise, Papyrus. Are you ready to cook, like you've never cooked before?"

The skeleton picked up on the building intensity in the room and clenched his fists. "YES! LET'S GO RIGHT NOW!" He marched straight outside and only waited to lock the door behind the two of them. With his car's front seats pushed back to make space for his chest piece, the two of them headed out to look for the address on the flier. On the way, Undyne found two things strange. For one, Alphys had told her that humans usually took months to learn to drive, and that some countries didn't even allow you to take a test before you had a few dozen hours of driving classes, yet Papyrus had his license within weeks. Even ignoring all the formal implications, how did he learn to drive this fast? The other thing was how excited he was about this particular car. Sure, there was his bed and all, but Papyrus was really overdoing it with how much this meant to him. It wasn't that great in her eyes. It was kinda short, it only had four seats if you pushed the front seats forward, which left them to be pretty narrow. She thought of that in comparison to the big thing the human had been bussing them around with on their first days on the surface. Closed off to the outside unlike this one, slide-able walls and amount of in-built gadgets ranging from navigation systems to adjustable heating, that it made it seem like Alphys had designed it. At least in comparison to this stylish but old gas-guzzler.

The place they were headed to, wasn't exactly downtown. They had to go straight through the city and quite a bit further out, into the industrial outskirts of Enkate City. Around a few narrow and short roads, they came to their destination, built into a former factory building and probably living off the people that worked in the nearby facilities. When they arrived, the name-giving owner of the place was at the scene to their surprise. He seemed a bit strict from how he was talking to his employees, a real no-crap leader from what she could tell. When they got to him, he went straight to the point and got Papyrus signed up. He seemed a bit overwhelmed with the skeleton's enthusiasm though. Undyne made sure to have Sans contact him to task him to go easy on his brother. He didn't like where they had gone at all. Well with this, she was at least braced for any outcome. She couldn't look over Papyrus' shoulder every step of the way after all.

Instead, she spent the following week relaxing and seeing what the surface had in store. Alphys dragged her to a very small anime convention. Although 'dragging' was saying a bit much, she was pretty pumped about going there herself, and calling it a convention was a bit much too, it was just a few stands in an underground restaurant and going there was more about meeting local fans, rather than actually going to a full-fledged convention. After the applause that followed a little incident where the only other Monster that was there, a crispy roll from the lower Ruins, spotted them and 'assumed his final form' before firing energy blasts and starting and losing a short fight with them, Undyne found a special offer for a whole season of 'Kenshi no Tsurugi', for which she shared Alphys' excitement by then, to say the least.

But when she came back home from it, Sans appeared on the grass next to the paved walk to the front door. "* hey. ya might wanna come by our place. i think this has got something to do with you." With both hands in his pockets, he walked past her, but when she turned around to ask him why, he was already gone. She faced Alphys to see if she had any idea, but the lizard shrugged as well. Given the tone of the briefly appearing skeleton, she dropped everything and headed straight to Papyrus'. Steam was coming out of the chimney above their kitchen and when she knocked on the door and Sans opened her to come in, she could smell and feel the effects of intense pasta-making all the way outside. All four burners on their stove were covered, each with a big pot of overcooking spaghetti and the air vents couldn't keep the air from getting sticky either. The entirety of Papyrus' 'battle body' was spread across the living room and kitchen floor, and the man himself was cowering in a corner, opposite to the stove with his legs tucked back and his arms wrapped around them. It appeared like he had been through a pretty rough time, but he was silent and calm by the time Undyne arrived.

"* Hey...it's me!"She stretched out one hand, but it was slapped away. Slapped away. By Papyrus. This must have been something serious.

"* You lied to me." Whatever that just was, made Undyne shrug together. She could see his jaws moving, but Papyrus' voice wasn't nearly as - well - intense? - as it usually was. It was calm, fair in volume, as if by a regular person. "* I disgraced you."

"* Papyrus?"

His googly eyes emerged and he screamed: "MY SPAGHETTI IS AWFUL!"Was that all that it was about? She was about to turn off the stove, but was stopped. "LEAVE IT ON!" He was clearly mad at her. She had to clear her mind. If one thing was clear, it was that if he didn't know what his pasta tasted like before, he knew now. She was surprised though. Papyrus' sheer confidence withstood any sign of his cooking not being high quality, so this chef she had brought him to, must have given him a really serious reality check. His voice lowered itself just a bit, but it was trembling. "I DRAGGED YOUR NAME THROUGH THE MUD."

She had to stop him right at that thought. "* No, you didn't."

"YES! YES I DID. I WENT IN THERE AS YOUR STUDENT AND WHATEVER I DID, IT WAS BAD! IT'S NOT THAT CHEF EITHER! EVERYONE AGREED! THEY'RE RIGHT!" He pointed at a barely touched, yet broken plate of spaghetti that was lying strewn across a corner of the kitchen floor. "I TRIED IT MYSELF NOW. I NEVER TRIED IT MYSELF, BUT THEY WERE RIGHT..."

"* Papyrus..."

He wound his arms back around his legs and fixated her with his unusually serious eye-sockets. "WHAT? ARE YOU GOING TO LIE TO ME AGAIN? TELL ME HOW THEY'RE - WE'RE ALL WRONG AND IT TASTES SUPREME? ARE YOU GOING TO SIT HERE AND EAT IT AND PRETEND TO ENJOY..."

"* No." No point in sheltering anyone anymore. The cards already were on the table after all. Her stern interruption startled the skeleton. Made him listen intently. "* Your spaghetti sucks. Your cooking sucks." She smiled at him. "* But you know what? That's okay, mine sucks too. I don't know how to cook. Let alone pasta. Remember what happened last time I tried that? The last cooking lesson underground? With..."

"THE HUMAN! THE HUMAN LIED TO ME TOO!"

"* Yeah...we probably all lied to you."

"IT'S SO CONSIDERATE, I KNOW." He was relaxing more and more. "BUT IT WAS SO EMBARRASSING." He let go of his legs and held Undyne by both of her upper ams. "PROMISE ME, DON'T LIE TO ME ANY MORE. IF SOMETHING I DO IS BAD, TELL ME IT'S BAD."

Seeing him open up calmed herself down too. She placed her right hand on the skeletal one that held her shoulder. "* No worries. From now on, it's all brutal honesty. You've got my word." Things weren't half as bad as she was afraid as they were when Sans first showed up.

Speaking of which. "* on the flipside, it's actually edible now." The shorter skeleton was sitting at the table with a plate of Papyrus' recent excess product and trying it with a fork. "* that chef may not be the emotional type, but papy sure made a lot more progress with him than he did with you." He was still pretty mad, as she expected, but not so much at that professional that Undyne had sent Papyrus to, and more with her.

In spite of everything, that comment of his did sting a little bit, so she got up and headed over to him. "* Really? Gimme a try of this." She pulled the fork right of of his hand, wound a single string of spaghetti around it, and tried herself. It wasn't ice cold, it wasn't hard as stone, Sans was right, this actually did feel like something to eat. "* Woah...this was all in one week?"

"* yep."

Not to confuse, it was still horrible, but not nearly as horrible as it used to be. "* You know what, maybe you're not such a hopeless case after all." She went back to the kitchen, grabbed Papyrus by one hand and pulled him back up on his feet. "* Come on, let's get all this cleaned up. And maybe, you know..." She made a hand gesture, circling the exposed frame of Papyrus' body with her finger. Not that there was anything to see, he really was just a skeleton, but still, it would give him back some of his dignity. With at least a shirt and pants on, Papyrus helped her and Sans turn off the stove, get rid of all the failed spaghetti, and clean up the whole kitchen. It was probably for the best that they could finally get rid of all the age-old and long gone-bad spaghetti in the fridge.

This was the very last day, that Papyrus ever tried to make regular spaghetti for several decades.


	37. Aspiring Cops

.

A Knight's Coolest Dish

Chapter 04

Aspiring Cops

* * *

"The reason I chose 'Adaptable' as the name for the 'Adaptable Skeleton' models over 'Customizable', is a component I could only realize with the MKII Model. The prototype and only completed specimen of which would be you."

"ME?"

"Yes. I am referring to inherent adaptability. Adaptable skeletons, from the MKII model onward are capable of very rapidly adapting to new environments, whether those be differences in temperature ranges, a need for high energy output, or a need for an energy-efficient metabolism. As soon as the body recognizes that it is subjected to drastically different circumstances, it will change in strength or efficiency to fit the circumstances."

* * *

On the following Friday morning, Undyne and Alphys were at their table having some plain breakfast as usual. While Alphys had a tablet set up on the table, and was browsing something while going it slow, Undyne focused on what was right in front of her and was done before Alphys had really started. The doctor wasn't sure if she was even aware of her presence, she was so involved in a single task. She only really 'came to', when she was done drinking up the rest of her bowl of cereals, wiped off the remaining milk and started talking to her again. "* Ah, so what else have you been up to this week, anyway?"

Good that she'd ask. "* Actually, this is about you. You and Papyrus applied for criminology, right?" Now that Undyne was done, Alphys had her full attention and the taller Monster nodded at everything she said. "* And you don't like him doing that with you? And you would like it more if he changed his mind about that, right?"

"* What do you think? Does he seem to you like the kind of guy who can deal with bad guys?"

Alphys took that as a clear yes and she agreed. For all they knew, if Papyrus was a police officer, anyone he arrested would just claim innocence and he'd take their word for it. And that wasn't even considering how dangerous life would be for him. Alphys had read enough about this to know that in spite of what self-declared 'trusted' sources kept repeating, even countries like this one were drowning in crime, often the police didn't even investigate them but 'wrap up the investigation' without actually arresting anyone or getting someone convicted. Catching criminals, assessing which colleagues he could trust, how in the world would someone like Papyrus be able to navigate in this kind of environment where there were several layers of ramifications to every minute decision. "* N-n-no. But I think I have a way of helping you." She turned around her device to show Undyne a map. "* With what you're studying, you're both going to commute between two places." She pointed at an area in the city. "* That's the campus you've seen, where we're all going to be. There you're going for lectures on theoretical subjects. And that..." Her claw pointed at another area, quite far out, with lots of green around it, and several different-looking buildings and patches of ground, which based on their layout, looked like they were part of the same thing. "* ...that's where you'll have to go on at least two weekdays every week. That's where the more practical courses take place, you know, melee combat training, shooting ranges, obstacle courses. That's where students get prepared for the rough parts of law enforcement. I think you'll like that place more. But what about Papyrus? What do you think he'll think of it."

Undyne grinned. She had picked up on where Alphys was going with this. "* He won't last two weeks."

She had caught up with her. "* Y-y-es. I tried talking to them, but what I wanted was way out of the ordinary, so all I got was a form e-mail. I asked Asgore, he went there by now, and suddenly, they all agreed to everything he asked. We have a kind of agreement now, b-b-but only if you want to..."

"* Go on."

"* It-it-it's still several months until classes start. If you two said yes, you could visit that place right next Monday, and they'd put you two in a lite training program with other people who are there to complete theirs in-between semesters."

Undyne seemed to like the idea. In fact she was so excited, she was first leaning over the round table with one arm, but now she was reaching half-way across it, in spite of how wide it was. "* Yes! Yes! All the yesses in the world!" She sprang up, walked around it, grabbed Alphys' head and gave her a kiss that ended as quickly as it started. "* Thank you so much! I'll go over to Papyrus' straight away!"

"* Wait! What if-if-if..."

She tried to stop her, Undyne answered her question before she could finish it. "Don't you worry about Papyrus! I can talk him into that!"And with that, she was gone. Well either way, it went better than expected. And after all this, she still hadn't even really started with her breakfast. She shrugged. She guessed she was going to eat in front of the computer, as usual. But before that, she needed a fresh lab coat. The hot coacoa got spilled over the one she was wearing in all this sudden excitement.

* * *

Mere seconds after what she heard Alphys describe, an overexcited tiderider was standing at and knocking at the skeleton brothers' door. "* hey." Without further ado, Sans had gotten up to get the door, open it and went right back to lie on the couch and read a book.

"UNDYNE! A GOOD MORNING TO YOU!" Papyrus didn't seem to bother leaving the kitchen. "PLEASE, COME IN AND CLOSE THE DOOR BEHIND YOU!" She could hear from the vents that the kitchen was being used. Not as intensely as last evening, but still, a bit strange considering. Even when she was coming closer, wearing an apron, mashing with a spoon with one hand and adding salt with another, he was making something in a tiny pot. Eventually, she stood in front of the stove right next to him. It was rice. Presumably from the little rice bag next to him. "BEHOLD MY NEWEST VENTURE! AFTER A LONG JOURNEY OF DISCOVERY..."

"* .. in the grocery store...", shouted his brother from the living room.

"...I DECIDED TO EXPAND MY HORIZONS TODAY!" She was astounded at how much he seemed to have taught himself about something completely unfamiliar overnight. He was cooking it, with a pot, granted, the water level was reaching twice as high as it was supposed to, mistakes were being made, but otherwise, it seemed he was doing everything normally. "NOW FOR THE STIRRING!" Then he grabbed a big spoon, and started stirring. But not normal-people-stirring, more like Undyne-when-desperately-trying-to-make-a-point-stirring, which as an observer, even she could tell was not meant to be done that way. Once he put the pot back down, when grains of rice so puffed up, they were oozing water even afterwards, were strewn across the rest of the stove, the skeleton put down both his kitchen mitts and sprinted past her up the stairs. In those moments of silence, she slowly wandered back out of the kitchen to give Sans a questioning look, but he just raised his shoulders. The moments passed and their explorer came sprinting back down. "TURNING DOWN THE HEAT AND COVERING THE POT!" His computer was in his room upstairs, he was probably looking all this up on the internet. And following it to the letter, as far as he could. After doing what he announced, he took off the apron, patted his hands and placed them on both sides of his metal pants. "AND NOW WE WAIT."

No-one said a thing for a few more seconds. "* How long exactly?"

To answer that, Papyrus grabbed an egg timer and set it. "FIVE MINUTES."

A few more moments later, Undyne broke the silence again, hopefully for good. "* We don't have to stand here for five minutes, you know."

"YOU ARE RIGHT! SANS, MAKE SOME ROOM, YOU UNAMBITIOUS LAZYBONES." When the two of them went over to the couch, the shorter skeleton got up without further ado. "HAVE YOU BEEN DOING ANYTHING PRODUCTIVE YOURSELF RECENTLY?"

Already on the way out, Sans turned around and his pupils wandered across the room. "* yeah...i've been...uhm..."

"ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. GET OUT THERE AND DISCOVER SOMETHING TO DO WITH YOUR TIME!" Before Sans headed out and closed the door, he gave Undyne one more smile. A very happy one. Papyrus had overcome whatever the previous day's crisis was overnight. And he was moving forward. Yes, whatever he was experimenting with there wasn't going to be a five-star menu, but in baby steps, he was probably making progress.

With the tv turned on but at a low volume, the two of them made themselves comfortable. "* So, you got over last night pretty quickly."

"YES, NO NEED TO DWELL IN THE PAST. I KNOW THAT MY CULINARY SKILLS ARE AT ROCK BOTTOM. IT CAN ONLY GO UPWARDS FROM HERE."

"* Yeah, about things going upwards, you still sure about the whole law enforcement thing?"

He would have none of her doubts it seemed. "ABSOLUTELY!" He shuffled closer and wrapped one arm around her while drawing the other across both sides in front of them, to invoke a picture of what he described. "IMAGINE IT, UNDYNE! THE TWO OF US! OUT IN THE STREETS BRINGING LAW AND ORDER TO THE SURFACE! TOGETHER, WE CAN OVERCOME IT ALL!"

She remained motionless and tried talking to him. "* You know, that would involve catching lots of bad guys. Humans often. You remember what happened last time you tried to catch a human, right?"

He let go of her and waved that off. "THAT WAS DIFFERENT. THE HUMAN WAS A HUMAN, BUT HE DIDN'T DO ANYTHING WRONG."

"* That's what they always say."

"BUT IT IS TRUE. HE IS SO SINCERE." Something that the acute lack of transforming mechs and young men with giant swords always reminded her was not true.

"* That's not the point. There'll be others that tell you they didn't do anything wrong, but they really did."

"THEN I WILL CAPTURE THEM REGARDLESS!"

Yes...but she somehow didn't believe that he'd be able to tell if they're lying. Either way, it was probably best to bring it back to Alphys' plan. She took a deep breath. "* You know what? Fair enough. Actually, Alphys and Asgore got all that figured out. We could go over there and learn to be policemen right next week. How about it?" Maybe throwing it onto him would scare him a bit away.

Instead of causing him to shrug back with second thoughts, this just had him widen his eyes. "WOWIE! YES, ABSOLUTELY! I JUST HAVE TO MAKE SURE IT FITS TOGETHER WITH MY COOKING CLASSES!"

"* Wait...more cooking classes?"

"YES. I HAVEN'T CONTACTED THEM YET, BUT I ALREADY KNOW I WILL BE THEIR NEXT ASPIRING DISCIPLE! THERE IS A LITTLE RESTAURANT IN TOWN, SANS KNOWS HOW TO GET THERE. IT IS FULL OF HUMANS THAT ALL LOOK JUST LIKE OUR HUMAN."

"* You mean, more than other humans?"

"YES." She could tell, he meant that they were yellow. If you didn't look closely, she could figure how they would seem like lookalikes to him. Shortly after that, the timer went off, so the skeleton got up, turned off the buzzing device and headed over to the kitchen. Undyne wanted to see that. Five minutes was nothing, and there was no way some believable recipe gave it such a short time. "NOW FOR MY PERSONAL TOUCH."

"* Uh, Papyrus..."

Without turning off the stove, the aspiring cook took off the pot and opened the freezer. "THIRTEEN MINUTES IN THE COLD SHOULD DO THE TRICK."

"* Wait, stop!"

"WHAT?" Good, he stopped mid motion.

"* Maybe that's why your pasta isn't good. You could try not freezing it and just - " She sighed. "* Do it normally."

He stood there for a few moments, with the pot still in his mitt-covered hand, which was probably very hot throughout this time, and which would probably have hurt very badly if he let go of it. Which luckily, he didn't do. He saw reason and slowly placed the pot back where it belonged. "ALL RIGHT. NORMALLY, YOU SAY..." He hesitated. "NO, THIS DOESN'T FEEL RIGHT."

He was about to grab the pot again, probably to put it in the freezer after all. Undyne quickly tried to stop him, and wound up tugging back and forth for that pot of rice. "* No...just let it...be..." She eventually forced it out of his hand and put it back on the heated surface. "* Stop!" She held away his arms and dragged him back to the sitting room. "* Sit down." She managed to get him to sit there with her and talk about some trivialities, even though somehow - she didn't know how - she kept catching his non-existent eyes wandering over to the kitchen, and each time, she addressed him by his name to make him snap out of it. By the time this was done, she would have him once - just this once, make what was left of a small pot of cooked rice without putting it in the freezer for more than half the time. It took quite some of her cunning - and her nerves, but she accomplished it. The timer rang, and it was time to see how Papyrus' experiment turned out.

A few rushes up and down the stairs, it was served Undyne on a plate. "* You don't want to..." She bit her tongue. Papyrus didn't have the strongest sense of how something tasted. "* Nevermind." She grabbed a fork, gently lifted a tiny patch of grains, and put it in her mouth. She pressed her eyes shut in expectation of the usual way that his cooking tasted...but it was...not remotely that bad. The heating up instead of freezing it down really helped. "* It is...actually not bad. Use a little less salt and let it simmer for a bit longer, and it'd be actually pretty good."

The skeleton's eye-sockets narrowed. "HOW DO I KNOW YOU'RE NOT LYING TO ME RIGHT NOW?"

"* Why don't you try it yourself then?" Papyrus placed the back of one hand on his pelvic bone and gave Undyne a stern look, who just grinned right back at him.

After a few seconds of this, he grabbed another fork and tried it as well. Ground some of the grains distinctly with his teeth, while looking away, probably desperately trying to get a good read on what it was supposed to be like. And what it was like. "I DON'T KNOW. IS IT SUPPOSED TO BE TEPID AND SOFT? AND...WATERY?"

"* No, the water bit could improve. But it's a better start than it was with pasta. So that police training deal I talked about...?"

"WHATEVER HAPPENS, COUNT ME IN. IF TIMES DON'T WORK OUT WITH WHO I HAVE IN MIND, I WILL FIND MY COOKING CLASSES SOMEWHERE ELSE."

"* Sweet!" That was all she wanted to hear.

"* what's so sweet?" Sans stood in the doorway, with a hot dog in his hand. But instead of ketchup, it was lined with something else that struck Undyne as eerily familiar. It was light green.

"UNDYNE AND I ARE GOING TO A POLICE ACADEMY!"

The shorter skeleton faced the caught fish. "* police academy? all in one with orcs that make funny noises?"

"* Probably not." She had no idea what he was talking about, but it sounded like it had nothing to do with where they were going. While Papyrus kept experimenting with his new pet food, Undyne spent the weekend doing her best to be in good shape by Monday. Which wasn't hard considering she always kept herself in good shape. When on Monday morning, she knocked on the skeletons' door, Papyrus was waiting for her right behind it, in a cleaned and polished battle body, even his scarf was patched up where it had had a hole and had a slightly stronger red to it than otherwise. "* You ready for this?"

"ABSOLUTELY!" Without further ado, they got in his car, he put on his sunglasses, and they headed out to the city. "I WILL NEED HELP IN FINDING IT." The tiderider got out her recently upgraded phone, to give him directions once they were near the campus. The sky was covered in clouds, and just to be sure, they bought an umbrella on the way there. The way from one place to the other was pretty long. It was probably cheaper in the long run if they used public transport to commute than pay for the petrol. But as of yet and for occasions like this, none of them saw a problem with it. They had to travel quite a bit out to the countryside, until they came across something that Undyne recognized from the photos and satellite images that Alphys had shown her. It was a pretty large white building, with a green roof, three arcs and covered in windows all over it. Many, many places to sleep for people who came here but didn't have another place to stay.

Around it were a manner of several distinctly different areas, most of them covered in green grass. Two of the rectangular surfaces were covered in sand and earth. At the front was a big green field, surrounded by a racing stretch covered in red rubber. There were people casually dressed and playing football on the field. A man in a beige uniform sat on a bench and upon seeing the two significantly peculiar-looking visitors, blew a whistle to announce that they were pausing their game. Their carpark was pretty full, and when they got out, Undyne was worried that Papyrus might have parked on a reserved space. Then again, given how far they had gone with this inofficial-policemen-in-training thing, they had gotten - from the sounds of it - by no means other than the people here being terrified of their king, this was probably not the biggest worry to have.

The officer from before approached their car to greet them with a polite laugh. "* Greetings. I'm Sergeant Steven Brock, but you can call me Steve. And you are..."

"* Undyne, pleasure to meet you."

When it was Papyrus' turn to shake hands, he was a bit more imposing. "* And you must be Papyrus."

"A PLEASURE TO MEET YOU, STEVE."

Once they were both standing outside and the car's doors were locked - not that that meant much with a hoodless car - the human led the two to the front of the main building, but took a detour to pass by some of the facilities that surrounded it. "* Welcome to the Enkate Barracks. They used to use this place to train people for the army, but since police and military use roughly the same equipment nowadays, it was repurposed to train police cadets instead. So, your big hairy friend was here a few days ago, and we came to an unusual agreement. You know about it I presume?"

Undyne preferred to lead the way between the two of them. "* Not sure, what did you take from it?"

"* As far as I understand, you two want to join the force one day, and there's no safer place to give you an idea of what's coming for you, than this. Athletics, melee, ballistics, we've got it all here. We need to. People who are done here, get sent out to the streets for the real thing." The inside was covered in shiny, varied tiles, as were the walls, and the tables and counters were made of smoothly glossed pinewood. By now, Alphys had explained to her why she always noticed this and what the pattern was. It was administration, law enforcement, everything that was on the taxpayer's payroll had money dripping out at all ends and was wasting it on an excess of luxury for all institutional buildings, both public and private. That was why decorative chandeliers were illuminating the supposedly rough and harsh to live in barracks, and the most smooth silk imported from distant countries was covering the windows so as to not let in too much sunlight.

They first went to Mr. Brock's office, a little room, barely wider than a cubicle and and with blinds covering the window to a larger hall. Here, they discussed the times she and Papyrus would come here at, and she made sure it was as early as possible. All she had to do was to make this be a prep course tough enough to scare Papyrus away and outlast him. They would come here every morning, so Papyrus could still go to his cooking classes in the evening. Undyne was content that this would be really easy. Within less than two weeks, he was going to look for something much less dangerous to do with his life. "* All right, that is it, then." The apparent tutor concluded, once they were done. "* They're preparing another run, but they won't be starting until in an hour. Do you want to see something else in the meantime?"

Maybe this was a good opportunity to test out something else that Alphys had been priming her about. "* Yeah, how about the ballistics?"

The officer shrugged together. "* Wow, skipping straight to the firearms, I'm not so sure if we can..."

Undyne crossed her arms, sat back and gave him a very concerned look. "* What? Are you telling me we can't see the guns, just because we're Monsters?"

All of a sudden, the man hesitated for a few seconds, before his facial expression eased up. She could feel a reaction coming from him, but it wasn't really something that made sense to her. It was fear - no, terror. "* Of course not, but let's get going, we only have an hour after all." That went so easy? She and Papyrus were complete strangers to them, creatures that they didn't know existed for centuries, the two of them come here today, self-invited, ask for guns and gets shown the guns right away? Any sane person in Undyne's mind wouldn't have agreed as he did, she herself would definitely not have if she were in his shoes. But no more than an implicit threat of accusing him of basic reason, was enough to scare him into obliging. Then again, so many people here were Orcs, she didn't have a reason to be surprised that the human was afraid of being caught not trusting complete strangers with lethal weapons, as ridiculous as that sounded.

They were led into a small shooting range, where Steve went to a counter, filled out a few papers and brought them firearms and large pieces of ear protection, before undoing some security locks on the guns and explaining hands-on how to use them. "* Simple enough, you see?", he went on. "* Now, once we're all safe to go, just point at the target and fire and - wait...are you blind on one eye?" He only subtly gestured roughly towards her eyepatch. She didn't approve of it, but she understood.

"* No, I'm not."

"* Then I'd like to ask you to take that off. You can't aim properly without depth perception." She gave in and handed over her eye-patch. "* Have at it, you two." She happily obliged and the two of them, for the first time in their lives, pointed a real - or at least semi-real firearm at a roughly human-shaped target and tried hitting the markers at the centre and on the head. But just like how swimming was a problem, Undyne had trouble hitting the mark, and her shots were all over the place. None of them hit the 'heart' or the 'forehead' of her target. "* Let's take a look at your first shot at this. Oh, what happened here?" He grinned at her, when he saw her embarrassing performance. "* Seems like we already know where you've got work to do. And here?" He stopped. "* Wow, what happened here?" It was slower, and more emphasized than with her. She came around to see what it looked on the other side of the thin wall between her part of the range and Papyrus'. All his shots were close to or right at the centre of where they were supposed to aim. "* We've got a natural around here. Are you sure this is the first time you're using a weapon?"

"NEVER TOUCHED ONE IN MY LIFE.", her friend proudly announced while handing back the gun. An uncomfortable feeling took hold of both sides of her back. Lucky shots. That must have been it. Lucky shots.

She faced away from Papyrus, after catching herself glaring at him for a brief moment. Maybe if she gave it another try. "* You know what? I want to try again." Steve was way ahead of her, and already refilling Papyrus' weapon to then hand it to her. With everyone having put their head muffs back on, she tried again, firing all eight rounds, trying to focus and withstand the recoil. At least they all hit the target, but she had trouble aiming and she could tell while trying to do so. None of the bullets were anywhere near as close to hitting bull's eye as every single shot of Papyrus' first try was, if they didn't strike the black dot in the middle altogether. "* Screw this!", she snorted, put down the gun, took off the earpiece, grabbed the eye-patch and put it back on. She didn't even give anyone a warning, and instead went ahead and summoned one blue spear after the other to toss it onto the target. One-eyed and using spears instead of a firearm that was supposedly easier to aim with, yet this way, she struck right at the centre, flawlessly, every time. "* Ha!", she shouted demonstratively and pointed right at the flat dummy, riddled with bullets and a whole bouquet of shining blue spears poking right out of the black dot on it's chest. "* Suck it, nerds! How do you like that?"

Even though she knew that was wrong, she felt a bit disappointed to see Papyrus not intimidated in the slightest. Instead, he clapped his hands with a thrilled smile on his skull. "AN ASTOUNDING TRIUMPH OF MAN OVER MACHINE. - OR - MONSTER OVER MACHINE?" They still had a lot of time to spare after this was over, so they spent it just heading back, making sure all the stuff they were bringing along was safe, and Papyrus took off his battle body, to reveal the sports clothes he was wearing below, even including shoulderpads made out of patched-up basketballs. The rest of their time, they just talked about trivialities. All the Monsters that moved to the surface had to get used to being asked the same questions over and over by all the humans they met up here. It just came with how many people there were that had only ever heard of Monsters through television or the likes.

Eventually, it was time to head out. Undyne didn't bring any sports clothes with her. Something she regretted not having thought of ahead of time. So it just had to be the tank top and jeans she was wearing. A whole crew of people were waiting on the road just outside of this entire place. A few of them greeted the two newcomers and shook hands with them. Most were getting ready for their little hike. "* This is pretty straightforward.", Steve went on to announce. "* No weights or anything, just a quick run." Quick was a strange way of putting a stretch that didn't even end after the second village they crossed. After just one, the skeleton was slowing down and stopping. In fact, he was already so worn down, he almost fell over forwards, and supported himself on one arm.

She stayed with him in case they lost track of the untiring troop they were following. So did Steve, as he seemed to have dedicated the day to looking after the two of them. "* Are you alright?", she asked. "* You wanna go home?"

"NO!" The skeleton shouted at her under puffs and blows. "I CAN DO THIS." It took him only one or two more seconds to catch his breath. After that, he shouted without looking back. "I WILL BE A POLICEMAN! I WILL BE LIKE A KNIGHT!", and then boosted right ahead to rejoin the others in that lanky, heavy-handed manner that he ran in...only to slow down and collapse a kilometer later. "NO! I CAN DO THIS!" He tried getting up, resisted any attempts from Undyne at keeping him in place, tried crawling a few more steps, and then let himself sag to the ground completely. "I CAN...I can't do this." There it was again, that voice...his broken voice. Just before he ceased to talk and was just heaving, as far as a ribcage could serve as lungs, and as far as a skull could breathe in and out. This was supposed to be the point where she got all cheeky, but hearing this voice worried her. She had never, ever heard him talk like that until his crisis last week.

"* Papyrus? Papyrus talk to me."She grabbed him by both basketballs and shook him.

"YES..." After another breather, he was back to normal, but visibly exhausted. He was sweating all over, and even when he was back up on his feet, he was only lumbering ahead a bit. "I...MR STEVE."

"* Yes?" The tutor had stuck with them the entire time. He probably knew the exact route that the rest were taking anyway.

"REQUESTING PERMISSION TO RETURN. I'M SORRY."

He laughed and humoured his mock formality. "* Permission granted."

It took them a long time to get back, and once they arrived, they all came to the conclusion that this was a enough excitement for one day. At least for the two of them. They waited for Papyrus to be sure to drive the two of them home safely and headed back to Shoneon Village. This had gone way better than expected. Undyne was confident that he'd take a 'break' from this on the next day, she would spend the day relaxing with him, and then she'd talk him out of the whole idea altogether, with what more would probably await them if they went back to the barracks. That was how she saw the next days going. And oh boy, would she be disappointed. Not only did she hear from the obnoxious skeleton but on the very next morning, she was woken up with loud knocks coming from a very impatient Papyrus waiting in front of their house with his car right there and ready to take the two of them back. She stumbled to one of the two circular front windows in her large room upstairs, opened it and leaned outside. "*What are you doing here at half past five in the morning?"

"COME ON, THAT ISN'T THE UNDYNE I KNOW. WE NEED TO BE ON THE SCENE IN LESS THAN AN HOUR." She had indeed made them agree on some impossible times, and this crazy guy was dead set on keeping up with them. She moaned in annoyance and told him to wait a minute, before she quickly put on some clothes for outside. There wasn't even time to stand in front of the mirror in their new bathroom - wait, why did she care about standing in front of the mirror? She quickly shook her head and made for the front door, where Papyrus was standing, tapping one foot. "THERE YOU ARE. LET'S GO!" She got in without a word, and halfway towards the city, Papyrus broke the silence that had lasted all the way there. "SO...WHY ARE YOU SO QUIET?"

She was quiet, because she - apparently wrongly - expected him to shy away from this. Which was stupid in hindsight, considering who she was dealing with. "* Nah, no reason. I'm just still a bit groggy." She was going to have to make a genuine effort to accompany and outlast him. Never mind. If she simply accounted for how much she did at the barracks with Papyrus when going through her own personal training routine, this wasn't going to be a problem. When they arrived, it was a bit more full at the parking lot, and he had to park quite a bit outside of the entire premises.

Nonetheless, when they arrived, Steve was waiting for them and led them to another large column of people gathered around a set of connected carts that bore weapons. Fully automatic, two-handed firearms. Carbines as their tutor called them. "* You're going on a little hike today. You'll be carrying one of these each." She inspected it for any security locks she would spot. She was trying to figure out how they worked as soon as possible. While she did, she figured it was probably best if she started getting interested in these guns. If she learned to yield them properly, even if never nearly as well as her own magic, they probably made for a very effective tool to quickly incapacitate or even kill bad guys. "* No worries." Their tutor continued. "* They're not loaded, you're just carrying them for the weight."

"CARRYING THEM WHERE EXACTLY?" Papyrus had to try twice, just to lift his weapon out of the cart. They really were that heavy. Not that that was any bother for Undyne.

Steve pointed at a hill, quite a bit away and only reachable over the length of a wide, mostly unused roadway. "* All the way up there and back."

"WHAT?" The skeleton's googly eyes sprung out.

"* Yep. It's a completely regular morning routine. We do that every second day, at the same time." And without further ado, they headed off, this time without Mr. Brock. On top of everything else, it was only the first few metres that they walked. To pick up with the pace of the others, the two of them had to stop dawdling and get marching. Having experience with consciously marching at an even pace probably helped last longer here, and she figured this was part of the point of this routine. Simple enough, and as expected, Papyrus only lasted all the way up the hill, before he gave in. Okay, in her mind, she took that back. Only wasn't the right word. She didn't even expect him to last that long. She took his gun on the way back, carrying two the entire home stretch, but other than the day before, Papyrus was all up and running again by the time they were back at the barracks.

Next on the agenda seemed to be melee training. Of which Undyne didn't get the idea at first. What she could only guess was a martial arts teacher, paired her together with a woman, one of the very few woman cadets in the entire place, and the only one in the classes they partook in, and instructed the cadet to show Undyne what she could do. When it was first about to start, she readied a spear and... "* Stop!" She turned around to ask what was wrong. The martial arts teacher stepped closer and gestured her to lower the spear. "* No weapons. We're going unarmed right now."

"* You fight without a weapon? When does that ever, realistically happen?"

The instructor tore the spear right out of her hand. "* What if someone takes away your weapon? You need to be pre...oh..." He was interrupted by Undyne simply releasing the spear he took and replacing it with a new one in her hand. "* Well at least around here, most people can't do that. Don't tell me you can do that too?" He faced Papyrus, who responded by summoning a bone twice his size, which he heaved onto his back. "* Fair enough, if you want to participate, just partake in it, as if you were humans. No giant bones and none of your glowing sticks either. We can go with any weapon in it's due time." The rest went by pretty easily. She went particularly easy on that woman they assigned to her, because she did not look like police material at all, she looked - and fought - more like a delicate flower that belonged in a sheltered home. Not that she had in-depth knowledge about life and work in human law enforcement, but she could tell someone so weak there was no reason to bother trying to learn to catch bad guys from a mile away. And this brunette with her soft facial features and the self-satisfied smile was certainly not tough guy material. Generally, something about that smile rubbed her the wrong way. That skeleton though, he didn't seem to be doing so badly at all. Shortly after going through a few grabs, he and his sparring partner kept going, but he was kicking some serious ass. Almost every time they released and started over after the first two, he was holding the surprised man in some grip he couldn't escape from without Papyrus letting him. It was only after two hours of non-stop melee combat and occasional sync motions, that he was getting worn out and needed a break. But after his break, he kept going for one more hour straight.

Before there was much time for small talk with everyone here, she went right back to the car with him. Their agreed-upon time here was over for the day, and upon sitting down on the co-driver's seat, a sigh of relief escaped her. This was more stressful than she expected. Either that, or it was just the novelty of all this not wearing off yet. Before they got going, she tapped Papyrus' bladebone insistently enough to get him to stop right there, when he had the keys ready to turn them and start the motor. "* Wait, wait, Papyrus."

"YES?"

"* What was all that just now?"

"UH..."

"* I've been watching you back there. You were kicking ass. Seriously. Where in the world did you learn that?" Things were getting even more bizarre. She knew he sometimes had various ways of practising, sometimes with Sans' help, but there were leagues between anything she saw of him in the Underground and what he delivered with these trainees. "* Seriously." Slowly, she saw his skull transitioning from a look that roughly said something like 'What are you on about?' to an 'I genuinely have no idea what is going on with me.'

"I...UM...I..." His gaze dropped down to the steering wheel and he became increasingly nervous, even to the point where the pace of his 'breathing' accelerated. "I DON'T KNOW...I JUST THOUGHT I WAS WINNING. BUT NOW THAT YOU SAY IT...WHERE DID I..."

Maybe a little much to fry whatever was in his tiny skull too much as of yet, especially as he seemed to have as little of an idea of what was going on as she did. She gave him a noogie blow away the cobwebs. "* Who knows, maybe you're just a natural."

"UH..YES. I AM NATURALLY BORN A GREAT POLICEMAN." Yes, that sure was it.

Probably not. The same Papyrus she had known for years, had skills or talents neither she or he knew about. But for the rest of the day, she decided not to bother with that any more. As of yet, it was still more likely that he was particularly lucky, especially since this 'skillset' only seemed to be limited to specific things like aiming a human firearm at a target and those specific martial arts that were taught in that class they visited.

Or so she thought. On the next morning, he was up and waiting with his car right again. On their third day, they participated in the same light athletics as on their first day, just at a much earlier time. And it wasn't that Papyrus lasted throughout the exercise, but Undyne did see an insane improvement. If she had to guess, he lasted for about one and a half times the stretch that he did two days ago, until he gave in. And on the shooting range that they were - this time - visiting as the actual exercise, he did exceptionally well as well. Moving targets, prioritizing between targets, differentiating bad guys from civilians, he wasn't just good, he outperformed her even when she went against what she was told and kept her eye-patch on. Getting outdone like this by him, at least on the inside, upset her so much more than she wished it would have. Sure, he was certainly not holding back, but she knew well enough that to him, this wasn't about beating her, he just wanted to impress her, and try to prove to her that he had what it took. More than anything, she felt guilty at how something within her saw him more and more as a rival in front of all the cadets, while to him, she was a friend - or a big sister - to rally around.

In the days that followed, he didn't let up the least bit. He was always at her and Alphys' house on time, he always did exceptionally on all the police-specific stuff and on top of that, in all the physical training that was much, much tougher on him than anything he did on his own time, he was catching up. His stamina was improving inexplicably quickly. Within a week, the exercise that seemed completely impossible to accomplish to him on their first day, was like nothing to him, and she caught herself getting worn out more than him. She was getting seriously worried. 'Won't last two weeks' her butt. Things were getting serious. She had given him a challenge in longevity that she specifically chose and designed with the intention of him failing. And he just overcame it guns blazing.


	38. a familiar font

.

A Knight's Coolest Dish

Chapter 05

a familiar font

* * *

The entire first two weeks of this thing, she tried to tell herself that she was seeing things that weren't there. That she was overestimating him and underestimating him whenever needed to paint this perplexing picture. But at that point, she had come to the conclusion that regardless of how hard she tried to, there was no denying it. Something strange was going on. She just had to wait for the right moment to ask the right person. And he could only think of one person to ask. Papyrus insisted he spent the rest of the afternoon working on whatever this week's cooking classes culminated in him creating. She told him to surprise her and Alphys when he's done. When she told Alphys that they were coming by though, she insisted on heading to the grocery store to pick up some things before they arrived. When it was about to be time soon, she saw her opportunity in going back to the skeletons, even at the risk of catching what he was making. When she had the door opened by a very hasty Papyrus, she barely had the time to greet him before he went back to the noisy kitchen. "ALMOST FINISHED. JUST A LITTLE MORE..."

He held a little can over the pot and sprayed something onto it that she couldn't tell. She had asked to be surprised though, so she sat down next to Sans, who was watching some kind of news or talk show with an interview of the mayor of the city, Jaclyn Wimble, who for some reason made Alphys very skittish whenever she was brought up or mentioned somewhere. The nervous interviewer laughed awkwardly while shuffling around his papers to give them a quick look and address the mayor again. "* Yes, I'm sorry for the inconvenience, but as for the audience at home, we get bombarded about thi. So, what is it you have to say about supposed recent human disappearances in the city?"

The snappy woman made a gesture that had her slapping the question away in an instant, while tilting up her face to raise up her nose, close her eyes and shake her head in a theatrically annoyed fashion. "* Complete conspiratorial hogwash. That is all just fake news, made up by conspiracy theorists who hate Orcs. Absolutely not worth looking into whatsoever. Anyone who talks about this nonsense is a hateful person who just wants minorities - innocent women and children - dead. And they should be called out and treated as such. It is two thousand and fifteen. This kind of bigotry is a relic of the past and doesn't belong on the streets of my city." Both were confused by the sudden leap from humans missing to hating Orcs.

The all the more startled interviewer went on to speak towards the camera. "* Powerful words, from a strong and forward-thinking woman."

After his words of praise, he went on to spend several minutes of their airtime going off on how their show didn't condone 'bigotry' and all that. Upon seeing that he still wasn't done after two minutes, Undyne took that as her cue to try and start a conversation with the shorter one of the brothers. "* So news, huh?"

He nodded. "* it's good to keep up with what's going on around here, yeah."

An awkward nod later, she tried to bring it closer to where she wanted to go with this. "* So, has Papyrus been talking about our time at the barracks, or..."

"* he never stops."

"THAT IS NOT TRUE, SANS.", it echoed from around the corner.

"* ooonly thing he ever talks about."

"I CAN STILL HEAR YOU!"

She tried to keep things from spinning onto something else. "* Does he mention anything unusual?"

"* he says you help him with all the hard, physical stuff."

The two of them continued staring blankly at the screen with the still uninterruptedly moralizing moderator. "* Anything else? What does he think about the guns?" Sans remained silent. "* Is he confident with those?"

"* not anymore than with anything else."

"YOU'RE DAMN RIGHT." With both hands on his hips, Papyrus came out of the kitchen and gave Sans a disapproving look. He was clearly very embarrassed about the two of them talking about him like that.

"* i think she wants to know if you're good at shooting."

"HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN WHO I AM? I AM GREAT AT EVERYTHING." The tone of his voice had a worrying note of shakiness in it.

"* except cooking?"

"...EXCEPT COOKING. BUT I'M IMPROVING" Relaxed once again, he returned to the site of his work. "AT LEAST I HOPE SO."

"* lemme take a look then." Undyne stayed seated on the sofa when Sans got up to inspect Papyrus' work. "* are you sure that's supposed to..."

"THEY TOLD ME IT IS, IT MUST BE."

"* okay." The smaller one shrugged and came back.

"IT IS DONE. ALL PREPARED AND READY FOR TRANSPORT. AND OFF I GO!"

"* right behind ya."

She couldn't just let that opportunity slip. "* You go right ahead, there's some stuff I wanted to ask your brother about."

She was going through all sorts of excuses in her mind, but in the heat of the moment, being as blunt as this was what came out of her mouth. Papryus, with his hands full holding two covered and packed dishes, carefully examined her. For a brief moment, he was probably going to ask what they might have had to discuss. And in the next, his skull relaxed and he went off. "ALL RIGHT. I WILL MAKE MY WAY." After a mere step outside, he peeked back in and added: "BUT DON'T TAKE TOO LONG, IT WILL GO COLD." Either way that was a relief. That meant he didn't cool or freeze it.

Once he was gone and the door behind him closed for good, the two of them paused for a moment in case he came back. When he passed the window on his way to Undyne's she turned around to face Sans. "* So what is going on with Papyrus?"

He didn't seem fazed. Which surprised her. She must have been onto something they hadn't talked about before. She had a feeling that she was. "* not sure what you mean."

She took a deep breath, and tried to quickly bring him up to speed. "* So all the stuff that's basic workouts - well you know him, you can guess."

"* prolly a bit behind."

"* Yes, but when it gets to anything specific, he's...we were at the shooting range and he hits the mark almost every time with little to no effort, when they go through everyday situations with suspects and civilians, he just somehow knows what to do and actually, what to say, too. He does everything right, just off an impulse, and then they have this weird mish-mash of martial arts, where - well it looks to me less like he's not learning something new and more like he's redoing stuff he always could do."

For a moment, the skeleton's pupils faded out and he looked away. "* ...i...yeah, i can guess what's goin' on." With a sudden seriousness, he hopped off the sofa. "* say i showed ya all i got on him, all of it. will you promise to stop goin' on about this and just play along with where it gets ya?"

She twitched. He couldn't be for real, then again she didn't know what he 'got' on Papyrus. So maybe whatever it was would answer everything. "* No more questions?"

"* i show ya, and you stop poking your nose around. that's the deal."

She didn't like this, but if he offered her this right away, he probably had a reason. With an involuntary snarl, she stretched her hand out to shake his, and watched him walk up the stairs to head to his room. Unbeknownst to her, he wasn't actually heading to his room, and instead zapped down to his workshop to open the drawer with all of his and Papyrus' old mementos. Including all the stuff the Doc had found after he bumped into him the very first time. When he came back, he locked the door from the inside and closed the curtains to make sure Papyrus couldn't get in. "* so when you first met him, how old was he?"

"* Wow, that was way...in...he must have only been...nine?" They only really got to know each other way later, but the very first time She met him, he was approaching her when she was training and having a - well the kind of time she didn't like to talk about. "* If he was born in ninety-five, he must have been nine. But then he was..."

"* the way he is now?" Grown-up. Undyne was only a teenager, but he was already a grown-up and quite a bit taller when they first met. Sans raised the upper end of one of his eyesockets.

"* I..." She had to think about this. "* How old is he really? Or...do skeletons age really quickly? No, then he'd..."

"* lemme put it another way. where do skeletons come from?"

She waved that way. "* Okay now you're just screwing with me. Skeletons just come from..." Everyone had some place they came from. Some town, city, village, something where Monsters of one kind lived on their own. But with skeletons like him and Sans, she couldn't think of anyone. "* ...nowhere?" In fact, she couldn't recall seeing any skeletons other than those two in all of her life. Sans took this as his cue to place the tray with lots of different things on the table and to gesture her to take a look at it. She hesitated at first. "* you've been friends for years now. if he knew about any of this, he'd have shown you."

The tray contained all things that the Doc had gathered on the very day that Papyrus the way he was now, had come to be. The badge, the pictures of him and his colleagues, the copy of that little name-giving comic book of his and gave her time to examine it on her own in case she didn't believe it. Generally all this stuff belonged to a human, a grown man with shoulder-long blonde hair, and a comic book apparently written and illustrated by a guy by the same name. It's name: The Great Papyrus. Going all over this stuff, she took some time to try and process it and get herself a picture of what his all meant. "* Wait...so let me...okay. The dates..." The dates checked out for all of this stuff to be from before nineteen ninety-five. Before Papyrus was 'born'. She held up one finger to stop him from interrupting her. "* Human..." she held up the police badge. "* ...cop comes to the Underground...and somehow turns into a Monster...and his comic book figure...Is that what I'm supposed to take from all this?"

Only when he drew her attention to it, she noticed her own voice had gotten shaky, and she took quite some time between everything she said. "* calm down. it's still the same old papy you an' i know. he's got no idea about any of this. and i'd like it to stay that way." He stared at her, with those darkening eyes of his. "* You know, I'd also prefer he didn't choose such a dangerous path in life either. But he's my brother. He's the closest thing to family I have. I wouldn't let anything happen to him, but I can't get in the way if this is what he feels to be his calling." Normally, she'd find it weird how a little guy like him was intimidating her the way he somehow was but there was something very - intense - subtle but intense - about blackened-eyes Sans, that gave the impression of someone or something she wouldn't want to mess with. "* You tried to get in the way, and I'd say you failed." As if it was nothing, he went back to normal and shrugged. "* but hey, what do i know?"

Well? What did he know? This answered a lot of her original questions, but it made her wonder about completely different things. "* I just..." She summarized most of them with one single word. "* ...how? How did this happen?"

This question seemed to Sans like an opportunity to test her out. He could tell her the truth, but what would that bring him? It would simply not have happened a second later, but with her, who knew. Here and now, there was nothing that would indicate that there would be any change. But there was once a timeline - the merciless-mass-murderer-Frisk-timeline, where things were different. In their panic and as a desperate measure, Alphys had injected Undyne with with determination to try and resurrect her, should she fall in battle with Frisk. She must have, seeing as how Undyne melted after she was revived and fought him for a brief time. Who's determination it ever was, it was strong enough to keep all these amalgams alive to this day and beyond. So to break the rules of life like that, it musta been pretty damn strong. What if there was some sort of after effect? He tried her, by giving her the whole story at once. "* ya know, the doc an' i built this time machine, he tried it out and bumped into the guy that's now papyrus. that's how we know him."

But before he could think about how he went with a variant that didn't involve the Doc's name, he was startled by the main lights and the lights in the kitchen flickering. The screen that had this news program running, faded into empty static. And for a brief moment, he caught something on the screen. A shaky symbol. A black drop, accompanied by a very tinny and sorta autotuned-sounding noise, which felt familiar to him for some reason. But as quickly as it appeared, it was gone, the lights were back to normal and Undyne stared at him as emptily as she was the entire time. "* After all that? Come on.", she urged him. "* Just give me something. If all this crazy stuff is true, how did it happen? Humans can just turn Monster overnight? Please." She got up, tried to wrap her head around all of it one last time, and then shook her head at any of it. "* No, you're just playing a prank, right? You fetched all this stuff from some random guy at the PD. Any moment you're gonna reveal a camera or turn the whole thing into a setup for a bone pun, right?" She followed him outside, but he only turned around to smile at her in silence, before the two of them left and he locked the door behind them.

Even on the way to her and Alphys' place, he didn't give in. Undyne kept her way of wording things within limits that excluded directly mentioning anything she had seen or they had talked about, but she still tried to get something out of him that would make something about all this make more sense. The only time he actually stopped to tell her something, he stopped, closed his eyes, and said without looking back to her. "* whatever's coming, if you want someone to work with who you can trust and who gets all the right hunches..." He turned around to her for a second. "* ...he's probably your best bet." For the most part, he gave her what he promised her, but this deal only made her wonder more about all this than before. She figured though that if she wanted any chances at knowing more, she'd have to keep her part. Although if this wasn't some prank after all, so much would suddenly make sense. Like how he didn't know what a toilet was until recently, yet learned to drive at super-human speed. Where he learned how to handle all the situations they emulated at the barracks, where he learned to shoot that way. His obsession with that persona he created around himself, only to be revolving about the lost memory of a fantasy he created for fiction. Either way, even if it turned out that all this wasn't a big joke, she had to read this comic of his.

Papyrus was standing indignantly behind the door of the big fish house when they arrived, tapping one foot and keeping his arms folded up. "WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? IT WAS A WHOLE HOUR! UNDYNE PLEASE DON'T LET SANS' LAZINESS RUB OFF ON YOU. ONE SANS IS ENOUGH, BUT TWO?" She laughed and told him not to worry. "YOU TOOK SO LONG I ENDED UP WATCHING TEN WHOLE SECONDS OF ALPHYS' CHILDREN'S CARTOON ABOUT THE IMPOSSIBLY STRONG FLYING MAN WITH A SWORD."

The mood eased right up again when she leaned on one of his shoulder and tipped his armor with her finger. "* You better watch out what you're calling a children's cartoon. How about we watch some together sometime?"

"PLEASE NOT. MY TIME IS VERY VALUABLE. I HAVE IMPORTANT THINGS TO DO WITH IT. LIKE THIS!" When they reached the dining room, he pulled the covers off what he had brought here to reveal his latest creation. "VINDALOO, CRAFTED WITH GREATEST CARE." Once everyone had their outdoor clothes hung up, they made themselves comfortable around the large, round table. What Undyne saw in front of herself were two regular plates each with brown-red meat and rice, and both of which had something red covering the surface. Sans took a seat between Papyrus and Alphys, to have their two cooking- and police buddies face to face from opposite sides. There was still a lot of space between them though, and one side of the table was completely empty. Undyne stayed silent for a moment, gave Papyrus' culinary venture a close look, but had a bit of an unsure feeling. Maybe it was her trusting Papyrus a little bit less after what Sans had shown her about him, but something felt off. She looked to Alphys for - well anything, but she returned her unsure look and pushed one of the several packs of milk her way, that Alphys had lined up next to her own glass.

After a few seconds, Undyne took a short breath, shook off all insecurities and simply buried one fork in one of the pieces of meat that Papyrus had placed in front of her and ate it right then and there, before anyone else even got started. A decision she immediately came to regret. It was. So. Hot! She was screaming with all that she had, but luckily only in her mind. In fact everything was silent and everyone was intently watching her. Her - probably red - face had stiffened though. Once she gathered the self-control she needed to talk somewhat normally, she asked the obvious. "* Papyrus?"

"YES? DO YOU LIKE IT?"

"* How much chili did you put on this?" Alphys smiled, filled a glass with milk and pushed it in her direction. Undyne's arm shot right up to point at her. "* I don't need this!", she screamed. Which had the startled lizard pull the glass back. Undyne was tough. She wasn't one of those wimps that needed to drink milk whenever something was a little spicy.

"* i think he emptied the whole can on all this. see all that?" Sans gestured at the red that covered the entirety of what his brother had made. "* that's all chili."

"* Papyrus, are you sure that's how it's made?"

Sans pitched in. "* those naga are like goblins. they put chili on everything. they put chili on the rice, they put chili on the meat, they even put chili on the chili. hey, papyrus. i think i found a grain of rice in your chili." The grinning skeleton carefully picked out one grain of rice, causing a dash of that red powder to fall right off and onto the rest.

Naga cooking, huh? She guessed in the future, she just had to stay away from THIS TERROR TO HER TASTEBUDS! She couldn't hold it anymore. Only in part voluntarily, her hand stretched out to point straight at the shrugging lizard and she commanded off the top of her lungs. "* **ALPHYS! MILK! NOW!** " Alphys, now more relieved that she had guessed right, quickly gave her that glass back, which Undyne downed in one go. She was amazed at how relieving that was. She must have already started to get used to having volcanic heat carve up the insides of her mouth. "* God...Papyrus..."

"YES?"

With one more deep breath, she wasn't on edge any more, and smiled. "* I think you overdid it **A LITTLE BIT** with the chili."

"* told ya that wasn't supposed to be like that."

"I WILL REMEMBER NEXT TIME."

They kept on finishing up Papyrus' overspiced dish, but did so with no hesitation to back it up with milk. Alphys must have known about this beforehand, seeing as she had prepared for all of them drinking milk in raw amounts. Every inch of the fridge she could spare, she had filled with milk. The rest of the time, they spent exchanging stories. Sans knew all sorts of little harmless stories about the everyday lives of the Monsters that lived nearby or on the surface, like he always did. Papyrus gave some nebulous accounts about the naga that paid little attention to him beyond what was necessary and mostly talked to each other in a foreign language. Alphys went on about how all the girls on the surface seem to either have no real interests at all, or a horrible taste for western tv shows, like that one about a time travelling Doctor and his box. Something about this seemed strangely familiar to Sans. "* wait, i didn't quite catch the name."

"* Of what?" She was a bit disgruntled about the topic-shifting coming to a halt at that show she didn't like.

"* the show about the doctor, what's it called?"

Alphys fixated Sans with a look that ranged somewhere between disappointment and frustration. "* It's called 'If That Helps'. There's lots of talk about it online right now because of some documentary with interviews they're releasing, I don't know more I'm not really interested." Sans took the hint and didn't push her more about this. Their hosts were more enthusiastic about obsessing over far-eastern cartoons instead. Eventually, once what Papyrus' vindaloo couldn't cover was followed up by Alphys ordering more food for delivery, any discussion died down.

By the time they had a few moments of silence, Papyrus broke it right again. "THIS IS NICE. WE SHOULD DO THIS MORE OFTEN."

"* like, what? meet up like this?"

"YES. A GET-TOGETHER TO TEMPER OUR SOLIDARITY. AND TO TRY MY MEALS."

"* ya gotta listen to advice more then."

The taller one nodded. "I WILL, I WILL. AND THIS TABLE SEEMS A BIT...EMPTY." He looked over to a very large chunk of the round table, that was only covered by a catgirl figurine for decoration and was mostly unoccupied.

Alphys slowly raised a claw. "* W-we could invite Asgore."

Papyrus seemed enthused. He pointed right at her. "SPLENDID IDEA. WE SHOULD INVITE ASGORE. BOTH OF THEM."

"* if tori's comin' we could have frisk over as well."

"WAIT, WHEN DO HUMANS THAT AGE GO TO BED?"

Sans shrugged. "* not any sooner than your bedtime."

Papyrus had been caught with an embarrassing detail about him brought p and understandably stiffened the expression on his skull. "TOUCHÉ." Comparing their schedules didn't take long. The very time they were here now was where they already knew their free time overlapped. "THEN IT IS SETTLED." Papyrus knocked theatrically on the table. "THE EXACT SAME TIME, FRIDAY EVENING IN A WEEK, WE WILL MEET HERE AGAIN AND INVITE BOTH ASGORES."

"* toriel."

"BOTH ASGORES AND TORIEL." Sans left it at that. Wasn't like it made much of a difference. He was aware though that tori would be hesitant if Asgore was gonna be right here, too. It was probably better not to drop this onto her on last notice, so Sans decided to pay her and the kid a visit on the next morning. And by morning, he meant early afternoon, because it was already half past one, when he woke up at home the next day.

* * *

"* The greatest mystery around the half a century old series that is 'If That Helps', to this day, remains the sudden strange behaviour of it's original creator and subsequent show advisor, Harold Arbuckle." When Sans showed up in Toriel's house, Frisk was sitting in front of the television, while Toriel was off doing something in the kitchen.

"* hey, watcha watchin'?"

Frisk, wearing pajamas in not-matching orange and purple, was watching something that looked a bit bland, until it cut away to a montage of very trippy sequences that didn't depict anything in particular, with campy synthesizer music underlining it. The kid showed him his cell phone, which displayed a social media platform eerily similar to the Undernet, where Alphys had posted that this was for some reason relevant to human culture. And had added that Sans in particular sounded interested in this. After that little sequence, it cut back to a very old-fashioned visual trick made to look like overgrown stars in a night sky, while an elderly but very awake-sounding man was speaking over it.

"* Journeys through space and time, exploration of abstract scientific concepts using cheap gimmicks and special effects - sometimes with great finesse, sometimes with great audacity, that is what the widely-known show has always been about. And it would have never been made, hadn't Harold Arbuckle, over fifty years ago, conceived and proposed it at the local Atelian Broadcast Service." An image of a greyed-out old man with dark rings under his eyes was fading over the screen. "* With his guidance and often very detailed scripts, it was an instant hit despite it's minuscule budget, for many decades. Especially now, it has a global and unprecedentedly large audience, but the convenience of the circumstances were at some point overshadowed by a strange turn of events. In the Fall of nineteen-ninety eight, his behaviour changed rapidly." Sans got on the sofa to watch it with Frisk, and saw it cut from photo to photo. The earlier ones were all in black and white, and the people on them seemed happy for the most part. Once the pictures got colour and the man grew older, the expressions of some of the people turned more grim. "* Practically overnight, he started insisting that the protagonist of the series, the Doctor, along with his time machine and most of what came with it, were real, and that he had met him. Soon after this had begun, he started claiming this - real - Doctor had met other people too, none of which could confirm his claims. He was convinced that the Doctor used to be on pictures he had taken with him and friends, but even acknowledged himself that the being he described was nowhere to be seen when he showed them to anyone. For all that anyone can know, Harold Arbuckle, the creator of 'If that Helps' had gone mad."

The picture cut to an empty studio with a large 'If That Helps' logo as the backdrop, with the man the voice belonged to, narrating as the camera slowly panned out. "* The series featured the Doctor having the strangest and sometimes outright ridiculous things happen to him. He was trapped in other universes, replaced with malicious doubles, erased from time, rewritten into time, taken over by incorporeal entities, there was no corner of what the human mind could conceive with that hadn't been explored in the many tv serials, novels, audio plays, and other stories about his travels. Understandably, with as large and dedicated a fanbase as it has, there were a lot of calls for more information on the exact details of the creator's condition. Of course there were some who would think 'What if he isn't mad? What if the Doctor had really been real and just erased from all of space and time, as it had happened several times in the course of the show?' There was a demand for information, but in respect of his wife's demand for privacy, most of the later material was kept from the public.

It is only now, after she had been deceased for two years, that the rights' inheritors have given green light to publish what we will show you now. The longest interview, detailing and accompanying our journey through the mind of man himself, Howard Arbuckle."

The picture faded out and faded back into a low-colour feed of two men on chairs with an empty grey background and the neatly suited younger man leaning forward and asking the man from the photographs. "* So you're saying he visited you?"

Mr. Arbuckle, a bit shaky and with a lot of folds in his face, nodded and leaned back. "* Yes, ever since the very first time on a Saturday evening back in nineteen-sixty-three, he would appear. Every Saturday evening at quarter to seven. The wife and I would always have a cup of tea not before long, and he would never miss an opportunity to tell us stories, some of which I more or less copied for entire episodes."

The interviewer shuffled around the cards he was holding, which probably had questions on the front side. "* We'll get to your wife's stance on this a little later - as for now, the audience would probably prefer to know - is this Doctor the the inspiration for the Doctor of the series?"

Now a bit more confident, Arbuckle nodded. "* Absolutely. Almost every detail about the character of the show, is a detail I've either heard from him or that was apparent to me."

"* And what kind of details would that be?"

It seemed that was a point where the old man had something to tell and adjusted himself in his seat. "* Well for a start, he's an alien. He isn't a human being from earth. He was never intended to be one." While he was going on, the screen faded into short clips from what Sans could only guess were from that tv show they were talking about. The common theme was that there was always a man - there were several different ones - with a very strange costume making very overt gestures. "* We only had him look human, because it's of course much easier to believably portray, especially considering we didn't have things such as cg or post-eighties special effects. What we mostly had was a studio cellar full of costumes and props, so we wrote the series in a way that allowed us to use just that."

"* All right, what makes you so sure he was an alien?"

"* Listen. The tv-Doctor looks human, but the real one never did. He looked completely different. He must have been an alien. He looked like nothing I had ever seen in my life. His face - his skin - moved, but it was completely white and felt solid on the surface. It was...a bit like a mask. Like an old theatre mask." A cold feeling crept up Sans' back. "* ...but with two - open lines, like it was broken. The mask I mean. One break was above his right eye and one below his left eye. And his eyes weren't like human eyes, or like eyes of any animal I remember seeing. It was as if they were just two black holes with white, shining pupils in them." It was the Doc. How could he be describing the Doc? At least the hands didn't match. "* And on top of that, his hands were made of appendages that were outwardly segmented, a bit like bones and each had a hole in the middle." No, he was definitely talking about the Doc. How? How was he talking about the Doc? Every time Sans did, people forgot, any picture he found or drew with the Doc on it had the Doc disappear, yet this guy was describing someone that looked exactly the way he recalled the Doc. "* He must have been an alien, so we kept him as an alien, we just gave him a human appearance so we didn't need to have the audience look at the same shoddy costume week after week."

This made no sense. No, there must have been a way in which it made sense. What did the Doc say about changing timelines? He always used a tissue to describe it. Pierce it with something small and adjust it back, it's like nothing ever happened. Cut it open with something big, you can remove what cut it open, but the tissue stays changed. All of Sans' attempts at reminding people of the Doc must have been like the needles, while this guy making an entire tv show that people around the world watched, probably was the big pair of scissors that made a visible cut. His impact was big enough to stay. Then again, if the Doc, or anything of him, remained through this show, maybe that could help him find out what happened to him. Maybe the guy knew...but the guy was dead, that was part of the reason why Sans could see any of this. His attention was drawn back to the immediate moments of the documentary, when something else came up.

While clips played showing more fictional Docs talking to humans wearing fashion from times Sans could sorta piece together were the last few decades, just from judging based on stuff Monsters found swept into the Underground over the years, the interview continued. "* So one pressing issue that dedicated viewers of the show have always been very curious about are two names that keep coming up with no real payoff or clear indication of who they're referring to. You can probably guess which ones."

From the sound of it, the producer indeed knew immediately what the other human was referring to. "* Ah yes. That's connected to his homeworld. I have no idea what his homeworld is like, or where it is, everything involving where he comes from, he always kept a secret. From everyone, even from me. That's where the name of the show comes from. Because even in the stories he told me, and when I asked him, whenever asked for his name he would respond..."

The documentary showed a few clips repeating the same line again and again but in different scenes with different Docs. "* If that helps, I'm a Doctor. "

Arbuckle continued. "* The only other thing that I can only guess relates to his homeworld - because he refused to talk about them even when pressed - he only mentioned them at the side or in his stories, were two individuals he seemed to have known all the way back to before he first set off to see the universe."

The next clip featured a young boy in a bomber jacket, covered in badges, asking his rainbow-suited Doc: "* So whe're we up next, Doc?"

The human Doc would stop mid-motion of entering a booth in the middle of a forest, and raise a finger. "* That is exactly what little Sans would always ask when we set off for a weekend trip. I'm starting to realize why I took you along. Right then, come along, 'little Sans'." Come along, little Sans. Yes, it was certain. This was definitely THE Doc they were talking about. The Doc Wayne Duncan Gaster. The next clip showed a different, burlesque-clothed Doc spreading out his arms at the cliff with a huge waterfall in the background. He stayed that way for a few seconds, until he gave the human that accompanied him a disapproving glare. "* Not excited, argh the humans of today. Take them out to see the best views, and none bats an eye. That's where I miss Papyrus. Ah, Papyrus, he'd always be so easy to impress."

Back in the bland studio, the show's creator went on. "* Sans and Papyrus were the two names that would often come up. Even in stories he insisted belonged to the very first that ever happened to him. So sometimes, I just took those random allusions and wrote them into the scripts, in case I would find out more about them and could introduce them as actual characters. All the way to when the Doctor disappeared, I never heard any more about those two from his homeworld. They're a mystery to me. Probably to everyone."

Tori came by to greet Sans and to place some stuff to eat on the table in the middle, in-between. But before he got to talking about Friday, he preferred to keep watching this. The next part that seemed in any way interesting to him, was the one where things turned bad. Both for Sans, and for this Arbuckle fella. "* When the Doctor disappeared, it happened more or less overnight. I think I even went an entire day without noticing that anything had happened. It was only when on a Friday, I reminded my dear wife that the Doctor was visiting the day after, and she knew about nothing. Nobody did. Everybody I had introduced the Doctor to, had no idea what or who I was talking about. Sometimes, they'd even remember when we met, they remembered the entire times we met, but they had completely forgotten about the Doctor- the real Doctor - being in any way involved. I even have photographs of some of these meetings, look!" He shifted over to grab an album on a little table next to his seat and had the camera give the pictures close looks. It was indeed a bit similar to what Sans experienced. They were photographs of people smiling together, but somehow, in each one, it was like a weird amount of space was left open, where you'd expect a person to fit. "* See where it's empty here? And there? And there? That's where the Doctor used to be. He was on all these pictures, but from one day to the next, he was gone. As if he had never existed and I just had made him up."

The interviewer grinned. "* Which is probably what is the case..."

The old man put the album aside and got pretty agitated. "* No, he was real. He was really there. You must have seen some of my work. Do you really think I could come up with all of that all by myself? Of course I didn't. A lot of these stories, I would never have written unless they had happened. And I know they had happened because he told me they had happened! All the places I visited that I wouldn't have without him, all the people I've met who just wanted to meet him, none of this wouldn't have happened if it weren't for him!"

"* You met all those, because you came up with all the..."

Mr. Arbuckle was getting really angry. "* For crying out loud, I don't need your bleeding snark on top of everyone else's." The interview pretty much stopped there, only to have things cut back to the 'narrator' from the beginning of the program. "* What you have just seen, was kept by the ABS for several years. And to all those invested in the show, what do you make of it? Did the lead character of the show truly exist and was simply erased by some adversary or some accident? Or is it simply the imagination of an imaginative man getting the better of his sanity? It is up to you to make up your mind of it. I'm John Farris, have a good night." With a grin on his face, he ended the program, and the screen faded back into flashy, obnoxious tv adverts featuring Orcs advertising some skateboard.

After he and Frisk had been silent for almost this entire program, Sans tried to break the ice. "* well that's something."

The kid stared at him for a few seconds. "* Sans, what's wrong?" He musta picked up on how all this had taken him by surprise. But he couldn't talk about the Doc to Frisk, could he? Determination and all. Frisk would remember. If he remembered, he'd see that as a problem he needed to solve. What was Frisk gonna do? 'Determine' the Doc back into existence? It'd just be another trouble for a kid that had been through enough troubles by that point.

"* oh, uh, it just...reminded me of someone i used to know."

The kid didn't let lose, simply tilted his head and went on. "* Really? Tell me about them."

Sheesh, he had forgotten that he was talking to curious gotta-know-all-the-details-and-variants Frisk. A trait that came with - well - being who he was. "* he was like - a teacher. only that he had been there for me for nearly my whole life." He sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. "* and one day, he was gone, like he was never there." Something strange overcame him. An uneasiness in the front of his skull he hadn't been familiar with with quite some time. "* uh..." His eyes. He was near tears. "* i wish i could find him. but i dunno where to start. or how. doc..." Immediately, the ads on the tv stopped. It faded into static. The same black-and-white static as with Undyne just the day before. A weird noise was lain over it, like the sound of an old modem trying to connect with a larger network, or a strongly autotuned...voice? But if that was what it was, it was only in incoherent snippets that made no sense. Instead, on the screen, something flickered up over the static. Symbols that didn't stay in place, but were sorta shuffling around a rough destination, but in an order. A black drop of some liquid, two small circles forming one big circle by moving around each other and drawing a line behind them, a black square and a tiny black diamond. He involuntarily took a deep breath when he realized what this was. Wingdings. The symbols were just letters, but in an impossible-to-read font, made of all sorts of little images. And those particular symbols, in that order, he would recognize everywhere. The black drop was a capital S, and the other three were the rest of his name. It spelled Sans. 'Sans' had appeared in big Wingdings right in front of him and Frisk.

Of course Frisk, who was right next to him, witnessed all this. "* What was that?"

Who knew, he better laughed it off until he had an idea what this was about. "* heh, prolly some sorta problem with the cable. or the tv. want me to give it a check sometime?"

The human nodded with a smile. So much for the Doc and all that. He better got back to why he was here. Toriel had settled down on her comfy chair in the corner of the living room to read a bound novel. "* so, you two seem to have a pretty comfy time here."

The Boss Monster looked up and withheld a chuckle. "* I presume you could say that."

"* ya know..." He walked over and sat down on the armchair to her right. "* me and the others had a pretty nice evening yesterday. got together, tried what papy cooked up for us, talked about all the stuff we see up here. it was fun. so we thought 'why not do this every week'? why just the four of us?" From the sittee in front of them, Frisk turned around to face the two. Sans had caught his attention, so they had an idea of where he was going with this. "* why not all of us? all seven. with him, with you and with..." He already saw her disapproving look, but continued. "* ...and asgore. the whole gang." Everyone that was among the very first that left the Underground to discover the crazy world they stumbled into. He was waiting for a response, but Toriel's silence spoke volumes. "* aw come on now, after all that's happened, gotta cut him some slack. he was with us from the start, just like you were. and remember all the stuff he's done by now." He turned to her once more, gave her a warm smile, and then set off to leave again. "* think about it, we'd love to have the two of ya." When passing by, he ruffled Frisk's hair, and gave him a wink. He was pretty sure Frisk knew that he had some convincing to do, and he trusted Frisk to do his part.

* * *

With all that said and done, Sans was looking at yet another free day with not much to do. He had a lot of those recently. Only that this time, there was something on his mind, something that made him indeed curious. This whole thing about the Doc having his own tv show. He quickly went back home to get on the computer and see what he could find out. As they had already said, this Arbuckle fella was dead for a while, as was his wife. The guy himself was the only one that remembered the Doc. And Sans didn't have a working time machine right now, so he couldn't just head back to when he was alive.

For the time being, he took a quick trip to a graveyard. One particular graveyard, in a very wealthy part of the Atelian capital. Mostly secluded and populated only by humans and Elves. The sky was mostly grey over in Enkate, here though, it was raining, so he went back and forth one more time to fetch an umbrella. Getting around wasn't an issue with teleportation and the kinda speed he could reach. And there were tricks he had figured out, that allowed him to travel vaster distances safely. The graveyard was large, it was like a district of it's own. It took him asking someone nearby where to find it, but eventually he found what he was looking for. Between two statues, depicting human-looking angels, lay a large , grey tombstone. A rough stone that had it's surface all around carved under such effort, it was made smooth in spite of how hard that had to be, and in it, their names were engraved. Harold and Martha Arbuckle. 'May your tales forever shine down upon our lives.' And with a lot of area just left open until the next graves followed in every direction.

Once he was finally next to the grave, he placed one hand on the tombstone. "* say, buddy. wat'cha know about the doc?" Silence was what followed. There was nobody around to talk, there were no animals making noises, there was only the rain, his own breath, and the smell of wood and rock in the rain. He didn't know what he was expecting. He closed his eyes and remained motionless, so as to stretch out his sixth sense, see if he could get the faintest impression, maybe a hunch, maybe an epiphany on what was going on, anything. Maybe a sign from the Doc. The man that was buried here was connected to him. There had to be something. The Doc often said that things that seemed connected usually were. Where there was correlation, there was always some causal link, even if it was a bit further down the line sometimes. That you didn't have black-on-white proof of it, simply meant you hadn't found the connection yet.

Speaking of connections, the settling down rain was quickly oversounded by the ringtone of his phone. Alphys was calling. When he took the call, she was talking very quickly, and saying lots of stuff he didn't quite get. "* woah, woah, woah, slow down - a new-what? and how do you flood a general? like with booze? we talking drowning? oh, so like - an internet thing?" Yes, it was an internet thing. Well, at least it was more than sulking around in the rain at some film producer's grave. So he headed back home and to Undyne's place as fast as he thought necessary. In the basement, in front of her computer, Alphys had yet again two screens full of tabs and windows open, with all sorts of message boards and image boards about various stuff, mostly fringe spare time stuff this time. She didn't notice him coming in and was chewing at her lab coat. Whether she knew she was, he didn't know.

"* Sans? S-s-sans! What is going on?" She had a very frantic look on her face when she turned around to him.

He came closer to take a look at her screens. "* you asking me? what're you on about?"

She sighed and looked around, as if she was searching for a point where to start with this. "* I d-d-don't...I shouldn't have told you, of course you'd be interested in that garbage show and now look what's going on."

"* garbage show, we talking time travelling doc garbage show?"

She supported herself on one of both leans and stretched herself in his direction. "* Yes, time-travelling Doctor garbage show. I told you about that documentary they were releasing, and now look at this!" She pulled up the same kinda Monster related thread she always had open somewhere. There were whole rows of little clips and snippets from that program Sans had watched with Frisk. Specifically the bits relating to him and Papyrus. "* Now that your names and faces have been around, and then this comes out - there are swaths of people putting the threads on hyper drive. Fans of that show, people that obsess over it and have every line about 'Sans' and 'Papyrus', you two - you skeletons - whatever you are, you were mentioned in this show, again and again, long long before we made it up here! They're thinking..."

Sans shrugged. "* what? you mean they're thinking the doc is real and me and papy know something about him?" Alphys , while still breathing, more or less froze in place, the lights went out and both her screens faded into static yet again. This time, the symbols that appeared on it were moving less frequently, and were thus more easy to make out. Black circle, curvy capital h, two black diamonds, another black circle...it spelled 'little Sans'. And Frisk noticed it when he was at Tori's place! He definitely wasn't imagining things, this was real. "* ...doc?"

Of course it all stopped again. The lights that had gone out started working again, the computer was back to it's overloaded state and Alphys was still facing him. "* ...they're thinking that you and Papyrus are - I don't know - characters in the show? Or something?" She sighed, leaned back into her chair and buried her face in her claws.

Okay, sure enough, those human fans were probably gonna expect some sort of input. He might as well try to use that. He had - something. "* so these human fans, you think they know everything about that show?"

Alphys was too overwhelmed to do much and just stayed in place the way she was. "* I don't know, you tell me. You mean in terms of contents?"

"* yeah, like what the characters said and all that."

"* If there's any line that relates to something you want to know, there probably will be someone that knows or can find it."

Sure enough, what he had was probably an actual idea after all. "* say, can you ask'em to compile all that they got? everything on papyrus, everything on me...and while you're at it, any lines of the doc talking about 'rifts' or 'tears in reality' or something like that. dunno what you're implying but i didn't watch that show. i dunno what's in there. but anything they got about that, i want it."

The doctor had calmed down just a bit. "* O-o-okay, I guess?" She got to writing something up paraphrasing what Sans had asked her to ask. Within mere minutes upon her posting his request online, people were putting together clips, publicly accessible documents, little cardboard-cut-out websites and so on to get all that they found onto segmented lists. Occasionally, they asked for a picture of Sans and Alphys, which he turned into a little game of re-enacting snapshots from the clips they showed him, featuring himself as the doc and using whatever they had at hand in those narrow rooms and the hallway for props. That helped ease up the lizard's overt tension a little. Alphys kept reminding him that this was probably going to take more time than he thought, and that it made more sense to do something else while he waietd. But for the time being, this was too interesting, too important, for him to just sit back and wait. On this one issue, laid-back Sans was very different from otherwise. It was like his intuition was finally giving him something. He felt like he was on a trail. Like this was the loose end of a string that at some point, if he followed it, might actually lead him to the Doc.

Each time they found a new clip that related to him and his brother, he watched it several times. Almost each one came with a Doc played by a different actor with a different costume, with different characters and different backdrops. But somehow, in each one, something caught his eye. Maybe it was the nineties-kid's baseball cap, maybe it was the seventies-man's umbrella. The characters in all of this series had some characteristic objects and clothes. Eventually, he and Alphys put together a list of their own with all the clips that somehow clicked with Sans. They spent several hours doing just this, until Undyne came home from whatever she spent her afternoons with. The rest of the afternoon that was left, he spent shortcutting to town, from shop to shop, to find objects and pieces of clothing, sometimes similar, sometimes identical to the props that caught his eye in the series. When he stood in front of one shop in a bigger mall, he noticed how his hand was trembling. He was excited. It was like he could feel he was - somehow - getting closer to the Doc. He just had to figure out how. These props he bought, the point of them was that people associated them with the Doc. People that - however they did - knew about this fictional Doc, thought about him when they saw these. Whether they were consciously aware of it or not. Their thoughts, their memories, their determination - it all linked those objects and others like them with the Doc in whatever weak fashion that they did.

Once even in spite of all he could do, the shops were closing and he had spent a load of cash just on random stuff, he headed Underground. Deep down to the old lab, and lit up the old halls once more. In all the rooms he passed he quickly headed to the switches to illuminate the otherwise pitch black hallways. Until at the heart of it, he got to the old chamber where it used to be. Where they used to keep that time machine. A space booth in the same shape as the box the fictional Doc traveled around in. And here he brought everything. He set up a stored computer with several screens, connected it to all the networks he had access to. He turned on all the lights, even the ones the Doc used to insist weren't necessary, and brought more in. With everything at one spot, step by step, he filled the inside with with all the objects from the tv show and placed everything there wasn't room for around it.

That wasn't going to work. He thought through where his hunch was going. All these objects, through the thoughts of all the humans that watched this tv show about the doc, especially those that wished he was real, connected these objects to the Doc. The real Doc. Doctor Gaster. This room was connected to the Doc, this time machine was probably more strongly connected to the Doc than anything else. If he got it all together...If the rift was what the Doc had described it to be, the very last time Sans had met him, it was probably draining away space and time, too. If the Doc was anywhere out there, getting together mementos of him wouldn't work to pinpoint him. He needed to flood whatever channel he could create with space, in order for a notion of space to exist. He had to fetch some more equipment to set up and arrange around the time machine. Some equipment they had created as tools for their time machine. Specifically, he needed time. Not in terms of taking longer to make repairs. He needed to produce a steady stream of time and space, to bridge a gap like in a wormhole. His hunch was finally becoming something a bit more coherent. For any waves to travel through, it needed time. And these - things. These little moments where screens would stop working, and his name would be written. Whenever he brought up the Doc at that, at least lately. He was more convinced than he had been in a long time. The Doc still existed. Somehow, he did.

The hopeful skeleton connected the time machine's repaired navigation system with the rest of the computer. If there was any hope at locating the Doc, this was the best he could put together on short notice. All that there was, once he was done, alone in the endless, empty halls, was for him to hope it would work. He went to the computerm opened all the applications necessary and prepared all the pre-programmed tasks and procedures he needed. He had it send through a repeating signal and a live feed of the room, taken from the camera in one corner of it. And he sent it right through the time machine, that was stuffed with random stuff from the 'Doc'. He expected some sort of spectacle, deep down, but in his mind, things were bound to be as quiet and uneventful as they were. He could only hope after all. He was trembling. Not because of the cold, but because he was afraid that this wasn't anything. Wishful thinking, was probably all that this was. But if there was the slightest hope, no matter how small, he had to take the chance. "* doc..." he whispered in front of the wall of screens and into the large and outdated microphone. "* if you're out there, somehow, somewhere, if you can hear me..." There it was again, this uneasiness in his eyes. "* please...talk to me. give me anything. any kind of..."

He was interrupted when he heard faint clicking in the distance. One after the other, closer and closer, until he noticed that the power was turned off. Everything was turned off. The computer, the lights, everything went dark. For a few seconds, Sans was alone, in the pitch black darkness of this complex, in the middle of the night. "* doc...?" Fear...that was new. Even though that made no sense, in spite of a complete lack of any electricity, the screens flared up. They were all showing the same static as before. And the same strange noise started like before. Altered, mashed around and auto-tuned snippets of the Doc's voice.

The static was getting filled with letters, shaky, partly liquefied-looking, but still in the Doc's peculiar font, billowing around on the surface of the screen. A hand pointing downwards, a capital m that ended in an arrow, two black circles...he had to get used to reading it as letters again. "* Hello, little Sans." Sans gasped in surprise, and quickly got to try to type something on the keyboard, but he was interrupted by more words flashing up. "* I can hear you."

"* doc?"

The responses came in short, cut-off sentences, but they still came. One by one, as if to ensure Sans was reading them and get anything that was sent. "* Don't know, how long this lasts. I was watching you."

"* doc! is it really you?" Sans sighed. What a relief. "* way to be creepy! where are you? you've gotta come back, we need you, everything's all crazy on the surface!"

"* Take credit where it's due. You succeeded for now. The world is still standing." The world? Wait...Murderfrisk and the universe! The Doc knew! "* It isn't over yet. Strive and watch out. A lot of danger."

He was briefly smiling at the Doc's understatement. "* no kidding a lot of danger, that's why we need you to help! i can't do this without you!"

"* Time likely limited. The nice judge may show mercy, yet the good one never does."

"* wait, what? you've gotta be more clear about this! doc how can i get you back?"

"* You must prevent a war. When you face the elder. He will order your death. Do not spare a single Centaur then."

He was talking in riddles. If this was the Doc at all. He couldn't let his chance slip. He smashed into the console and left a visible dent. "* Don't ghost out on me now! We need you!"

For a moment, no words followed. Until they did again. "* You can succeed. But not just Centaurs, there's a human! She is worse!"

It stopped there. In the corner of his eye, he caught the light in a different room turning back on. "* doc, no!" With distant clicks, followed by the humming of the computer, the power returned to the room, all the lights turned back on and the screen displayed the same windows as before everything shut down. "* no!", he screamed at length. When he was done, leaning on the console exhausted and in tears, he closed his eyes and looked back at the screen. He hoped maybe this would happen again, but there was nothing. All the applications seemed to be doing what they were supposed to, but nothing - at least nothing Doc-ey was happening. When he checked for any incoming data, he was surprised to see that there was a camera feed of what happened during the power outage. He had to rewind and go over it several times to get what was going on. According to the camera feed, there was no power outage. The lights stayed on, so did the computer, so did the camera. It was just himself, staring at the monitor. What he remembered happening and what the video feed showed him happening at the exact same time, were two different things. In the very moment his conversation with the Doc ended, the past had been rewritten again. It was as if it had never happened.

Even though he knew that wasn't the case, it was to him like this entire venture led nowhere. All that was left was to pick up the pieces and bring everything back to where it belonged. And memorizing what the Doc had told him.


	39. Alphyne Undercover

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A Knight's Coolest Dish

Chapter 06

Alphyne Undercover

* * *

As the weeks passed and the Monsters had gotten into a regular weekly schedule to get used to, Undyne also got used to Papyrus' abnormal increase in stamina and instead of worrying about this, she took up the opportunity to worry a bit less about him and instead try to socialize a bit among her new peers. Specifically, the tender-looking woman that was her sparring partner in their martial arts classes had caught her eye. Her name was Miranda and going easy on a regular human was one thing, but not hurting her was a challenge in it's own right. One day, she tried going ever so slightly more rough on her. Just to see if she was holding back as well. She wasn't holding back, not from what it seemed at least. Her and joining the force - Undyne had trouble imagining anything like that going well. The only way she could see this work or play out, was if she ended up a highly dependent officer who was paid in full, but who's weight others had to pull. When they were wrapping things up and Undyne had checked up on Papyrus once more, instead of following him outside, she walked back to the still recovering Miranda. "* Hey..." She waited until she was sure she had her attention. "* Sorry if it got a bit rough back there." Miranda didn't say a word but just smiled and nodded with self-satisfaction, as if she was already expecting an apology. "* We've been doing this for some time now, and I've been wondering if you wanna..."

"* Are you asking if we should grab a cup of coffee?" This went a lot more smoothly than she expected. "* Yeah, that. That's what I'm asking."

"* Of course." All of a sudden very lively, her colleague got up and set off for outside. "* I'm free after this, so we could head out right now."

When they left the building, she saw Papyrus sit in his car with his sunglasses already on. "* Hey! Papyrus!", Undyne called. "* I'm getting home on my own today. See you later." Without a word, Papyrus gave her a thumbs up and turned the key to start the motor.

Miranda's ride was so short, the whole thing had only two seats and it's bulbous design made it look like it wasn't a car at all. Her human sparring partner gestured her to come closer. Upon walking around it, Undyne glanced at all the 'save our planet', 'endhumanadvantage' and 'NeverVictor' bumper stickers on the vehicle's back side. "* Just a sec." Miranda rummaged through the crammed seat next to her own and stuffed all the cosmetics mobile devices that lay piled up on it to what little space there was behind it. "* All right, don't be shy, take a seat." Starting to drive didn't stop Miranda from talking to her though. "* So how's the surface? You settling in?"

Undyne chuckled at how she could already guess what the first things were that people she met up here asked her. She scratched the back of her head. "* It's all right, all kinda confusing though."

"* How so?"

"* It's hard to tell what's right and wrong any more. It's like an information overload." What she was referring to, was how what most other humans in the village said or believed seemed to be in stark contrast to the stuff Alphys was saying when she was ranting off about serious but complicated stuff she read about. But as she would immediately find out, Miranda had no clue of what she meant, and was the kind of person with which she would probably hit deaf ears if she tried to describe what she meant in detail.

"* Right and wrong? I know exactly what you mean. There are so many wrongs and injustices to fight, it's easy to lose sight of it all. I know all about that."

"* Really?", the Tiderider responded with something between disbelief and surprise.

"* Yeah, I've got a whole blog about doing my part to detail how men and humans keep up these injustices and maintain their inherent advantages." Miranda pulled over to stop and fetched a black tablet computer from behind Undyne's seat to open up something on it and hand it to her. "* There, that's my blog. Just have a read." The part of the website she had opened was a post on a long list of columns and had the title "* The body language of male violence". It had a lot of words in it which she was certain she had never before heard in all her life, most of them were merged together from different, more common words. She had to reread it several times to decipher it, but if she wanted to paraphrase it in her own mind, it described how men intimidated women that aspired jobs for 'male qualities' into not aspiring to them using not social pressure, not physical force, not laws, but nothing other than what Undyne could only describe as 'standing straight like a normal person' and the article went into great detail on how this was particularly egregious in all preparatory elements for law enforcement. It seemed extremely bizarre to her, because she herself never really got the notion of being intimidated by anyone. Especially not just from people not bending forward like hunchbacks. And this was only the most recent post, this blog went on and on and on and on. "* So?" The vehicle came to a halt at a public parking space, where Miranda got out to pay for a parking ticket. "* What do you think?"

"* Not sure, it's a bit much at once." She got out and followed Miranda around the corner to the glass walls of a coffee shop with a green logo. "* I'm pretty sure that masculohegemony isn't a thing though. Did you make that up?"

She expected Miranda to be caught in some way, but she was absolutely confident. "* Not at all. It is commonplace within the academic consensus. You just need to get educated a bit more, and you'll understand." Which Alphys would later translate for her to mean "* Yes, it is made up and someone actually makes a fortune on tax money for nothing but making up stuff like that all day." It was only a hunch, but she had got a similar feeling from that from the start. But she was also aware, that if she wanted to make human friends, she needed to play along with whatever quirks and fixed ideas they had. Standing in the queue gave her an opportunity to look around. The people here were mostly humans. Most of them were men with beards and sweaters that had colours and patterns that didn't match, or women in suits with crass blue, green or red dye covering at least strands of their hair. "* Don't worry, Undyne. You haven't been up here for long, so it's forgivable. But here..." Miranda pulled up a business card of sorts. "* We have workshops there, where willing but unaware women like yourself can get yourself educated. I visit those too from time to time."

With their coffees and a table outside, where they were out in the light of the setting sun, Miranda went on: "* I'm sure they'd love to have you over." Undyne found what she did next very strange - not that there was anything not-strange about this person. She grabbed her hand and stared her right in the eyes. "* It's a very harmonious space." 'Space' was a weird way of wording whatever she tried to say.

The Tiderider pulled her hand back. There was no point in putting on a charade if she wanted to make friends. The charade dropping would kill it off anyway, if it wasn't supposed to be. "* I'm sorry, but this all seems a little weird to me and I'd really like to run this by Alphys before I make any promises."

Miranda was unfazed. "* It's alright. Take your time and think about it. Not like we don't see each other by next Saturday. By the way, who is Alphys anyway?"

Keeping the conversation going, weren't we? Was a bit of an awkward way to take it, but okay. "* She -um..." She stuttered for a moment. "* I guess you could call her my...girlfriend?"

All of a sudden, Miranda's eyes widened with excitement and her mouth opened wide. "* Aww that's so forward-thinking." Undyne remained motionless and watched this a bit intrusive human stroke her shoulder all of a sudden. "* You are so brave, that takes so much courage." Facing giant lizard creatures in battle was normal, but this took courage? Seemed perfectly reasonable.

Slowly, she picked up Miranda's hand and placed it back on the table. "* Yeah, she reads a lot about...similar stuff. She can probably help me figure my way through all this."

"* I'm sure she can. You should invite her over as well. There is always more education to be had." Undyne was sure there was...

Luckily, the rest of their conversation just consisted of Miranda asking the same questions everyone on the surface had for Monsters. In-between she drifted off into what sounded a lot like that blog of hers, but Undyne got through that by just nodding to it, until they said their goodbyes for the day.

Back at home, the first thing she did after ditching her outdoor clothes was surprise Alphys in her computer room. The corners of the desk were - as often - covered in empty packets of fatty foods, some of which were falling off the edge from time to time. She was very easy to surprise. When she was involved in whatever she did on the internet, she barely noticed anyone coming in. Once their greetings were done, Alphys asked what she always did at some point in the evening. "* So...how was your practise with Papyrus?"

Oof, Undyne sighed. "* Where do I start. The weirdest things happened today." At once, she had Alphys' undivided attention. She let everything on the computer be and turned her chair right around to face her with no intention to turn back around.

"* O-okay. Where did it start to get weird?"

So she simply recounted her encounter with Miranda, and pulled up that business card, which Alphys immediately seemed very eager to inspect more closely. "* Let me take a look..." She turned around and typed a few key words from the card in several search engines until she had a specific result she was looking for. "* ...funded and organized by the...oh g-g-god - Rosenberg Foundation. With that sort of name..." She turned around, gave a very nervous smile under drops of sweat emerging on her forehead. "* Never mind."

"* Why? What does it mean?"

Slowly, the lizard turned around, still with an unsure look on her face. "* So...strange, made-up words, endless ravings of how all men are evil...Rosenberg Foundation...I've been warned about those."

"* So we should stay away from them?"

"* Yes we should..." From one moment to the other, the doctor's expression eased up to her more neutral-looking I'm-processing-an-idea face. She got up, left and came back with her camera, made some adjustments on the controlling elements on it, and after a long session of panels and components folding into each other, her large film camera had transformed into a small pair of glasses with black plastic frames, similar to the ones Undyne had seen in that coffee shop. "* Yess! It's still working at least if..." She opened a recording application and put the glasses on. From the feed on the screen, Undyne quickly noticed that the glasses were recording everything Alphys was seeing through them. "* ...yes!" She knew Alphys well enough to know what was going on in her mind. Roughly at least. Until now, she was more or less panicked, because she didn't have an exact grasp of the situation. Now she seemed to know exactly what the situation was - whatever that it was. Knowing that Alphys knew, didn't mean Undyne knew herself. She closed the video feed and went back to browsing all those grey tabs on her browser. "* Undyne...would there be a problem if we went there?"

"* Wait, you want to go there?" She leaned on the table with her elbows to get a closer look at what Alphys was browsing to see if a closer look gave her some more insight. It didn't.

While typing something that seemed somewhat related to what she was saying, Alphys started to explain. "* The kinds of workshops and that blog...it's all nonsense. Expensive and well-funded nonsense but still nonsense. Normal humans would quickly see through it if they actually saw the core of what they teach. The problem is..." She opened up a video clip filmed by a guy that was immediately being shouted and forced out of a class room full of grown women. "* ...they are very careful not to allow any cameras anywhere near what they teach. But luckily for us, regular humans don't have this." She took off the glasses and placed them on the table. "* It serves as a disguise and they won't notice that they're being filmed. I could do something for a good cause. Finally"

She couldn't help but get off the table and run her arms around the clueless lizard. "* Aww but you're already doing something for a good cause every day."

Alphys didn't reciprocate the hug and remained stiff like a poker. "* I'm serious, we need to do this." Without moving an inch, the Tiderider just nodded with her nestled head.

* * *

The rest of the week had a very annoying addition to it. Overnight, Miranda had become Undyne's shadow in every discipline they shared. Except running. She was somewhere far behind. But other than that, she was everywhere. She would draw whoever she could into a conversation, involve Undyne and then bring up how Undyne had a girlfriend. And then she would go on about how brave Undyne was because of it. If she needed to, she would barge in on other peoples' conversations. And she would always do it with a degree of glee, as if she had struck some sort of vengeful blow to everyone she did this with. Albeit about some very specific things, this woman never seemed to have passed her teens. Either that, or this was something completely different that Undyne didn't get. Or a mix of both. She thought about using Papyrus to get her to stop, but exposing Papyrus to her...she was worried about what would happen if he was exposed to her and her blog for too long.

She had to suffer through it, but eventually, they had their weekly get-together, now with both Dreemurrs, then Saturday came around and it was time to get ready. When Undyne came down the stairs to have breakfast, Alphys was already in her 'disguise'. She wore the black-framed glasses that were her camera, a red, white-dotted scarf around her lab coat and a spikey, deep blue wig. "* Ahem." Undyne grunted very distinctly.

Alphys just grinned. "* Yes?"

Before she made any effort to go to the kitchen, she walked over to the overdressed doctor. "* Don't you think that's a bit much?"

She kept grinning. "* No...hey!" That was, until Undyne got close enough to tear off and throw away the wig.

"* You're not going there with that thing."

In one more attempt at convincing her, Alphys got up, walked to the corner it hat fallen to, picked up the wig, put it back on and placed the stretched out fingers of one claw on her chest, while tilting her head backwards to look down on Undyne with half-open eyes. "* You simply are not educated enough to have an acquired taste like me."

This had Undyne laughing. "* You're starting to sound like her. But no. I'll argue about the scarf, but the hair stays here." This was enough for Alphys to see reason and after the two had some bacon and eggs, they left to look for the address on the business card. And 'they' meant Alphys looked up a route for them in advance and Undyne followed. She expected this workshop to be somewhere near that multicultural district where Monsters spent a lot of time grocery shopping and the like, but the centre it was situated in could not be any further away from any likely convergence of foreigners if they wanted it to. It was in a run-down public building in an otherwise very wealthy looking part of town, on practically the other end of the city. The roads all the way up a hill clearly visible from the centre were lined with single family houses, all of them with a pool, and each one looking more expensively designed than the next.

Alphys signaled that they had found what they were looking for, when inside the building, a narrow corridor was flooded with loudly chattering women, most of them roughly forty or above and overweight. One of the ones that matched this description, opened up her arms and vocalized her joy at seeing them. "* Welcome, you two! You must be Undyne." Undyne had never met this person, so unless she had watched the news in that one moment when Undyne was ever on TV, Miranda must have described her, and she couldn't imagine a flattering way of describing her appearance without the use of words such as 'more teeth than mouth' and 'eye-patch'. Nonetheless, she confirmed it. "* And you must be Alphys, then. Miranda told me all about you two." Alphys, in spite of her preparation for this, was visibly nervous. She didn't respond at all and just tried to smile. The two of them didn't once leave each other's side, while they, surrounded by those highly curious strangers, slowly made their way into what was nothing more than a class room for schools to take two seats next to each other. From the very moment that the woman that first greeted them, they drew everyone's attention and were barraged with questions and repetitive compliments non-stop.

All the way, until a little later, some commotion from outside heralded the arrival of their workshop's tutor. "* It is such a blessing that a woman of tan is giving us these classes.", one pretty fat self-described school principal added. "* It really helps bring some variety to our education." When they heard the words 'woman of tan', at least Undyne expected this to be some arbitrary characteristic that they were focused on for no reason, just like how Miranda was. Like this tutor having a little summer tan. She wasn't prepared for the person lecturing them on how to be nice to people and about what violent brutes and savages human men were, to have pitch-black skin and two unmistakable tusks poking out of her mouth. 'Woman of tan' actually meant 'Orc'.

"* Hello everyone." She began. "* I see we have some newcomers. Would you like to introduce yourselves?" All eyes were back on the only two Monsters in the room. As if this wasn't uncomfortable enough, but she was Undyne, she could tough through this.

"* Sure, I'm Undyne. I'm from the Underground."

The sweaty lizard next to her couldn't avoid talking any more. So she raised a claw to introduce herself. "* Hello. I-i-i-i'm Alphys? Doctor Alphys."

In a display of surprise that seemed weirdly put-on the extravagantly dressed Orc gasped. "* Really? A doctor? Of what?"

Undyne could very clearly hear the discomfort in Alphys' voice. Much greater than her own. Who would have guessed otherwise, the shy, secluded-living lizard having more trouble with this than her. "* Uhm...Engineering?"

With half-open eyes, the tutor nodded. "* Engineering, hmm. I confess, it isn't exactly on even footing with sociology, but we can work with that." Belittling Alphys' field of work. How charming.

To their relief, this was all that involvement that was needed from them. The tutor started holding something that seemed less like a get-together to hands-on work on something, and more like just a school class. And the subject was all but familiar to Undyne at this point. Masculo-hegemony here, verbal violence there, she started to see where Miranda had all these ideas from. Easy enough though, she just had to sit through all of this and wait as Alphys' glasses worked their magic. Unfortunately, it got so ridiculous, it became hard for her to just sit tight. And by the time their 'educator' was explaining how all jobs - no - the very notion of jobs as we know it, was just artificially constructed to benefit men, staying silent proved impossible.

"* ...and in turn, we need to subvert and erode all these structures..." The Orc went on while Undyne raised her hand. "* ...to replace all jobs and offices constructed to require male qualities like efficiency and physical strength, with jobs that value female qualities. That way, we - oh, the blue lady in the back?"

She caught a very intense glare from Alphys, that she could only read as 'Why?'. "* Yeah, so if we were to do that, what do we do to catch bad guys?"

The tutor's eyes narrowed. "* Bad guys? You mean men?"

"* No, I mean bad guys. Muggers, robbers, murderers and the like. People that break the law."

With a stern look on the almost human looking eyes, a stark contrast to the blocky wide mouth, the tutor nodded. "* That is simple. We will replace the police with social educators, who are trained to lay out to human men, how their crimes cause social problems." But criminals don't care if they cause problems, that was the entire point of criminals. And why the focus on human men? As Alphys would explain to her later, the vast majority of bad guys wasn't human anyway. She just shook her head, banished those thoughts and nodded, to imply she would understand. Once she had released some of that building steam that was her cognitive dissonance, it became a lot easier to wait out the rest of this class.

And after three full hours of this, it was finally over. Once they had shaken the hands of everyone that wanted to once, they made their way outside. They had just caught a breath of fresh air, when two women roughly their own age came out and approached them. "* Hey, good to have you around. So I hear you two are together?" The woman talking to them, was visibly fat, wore a track suit and had her hair cut short and styled into spikes similar to the wig Alphys wanted to wear. They confirmed what she asked. "* Good to not be all on our own. Ugh." She sighed with annoyance. "* Most of those others. Being attracted to men? So last century. So very backwards. That is not the path to equality. So this is Stacy." A very frail-looking and barely-dressed woman with bright green-dyed hair and a piece of silk covering her right arm, stood next to her and waved in silence. "* And I'm Patricia. So, what're you guys doing today?"

Unsure about anything, the two Monsters gave each other a look to see what the other thought. "* Nothing, really." Undyne responded after that.

When Stacy finally spoke, her voice was much higher and much more soft than Patricia's deep grunts. "* You know, we could hang out at my place and get to know each other a little better." Well, they got over the classes, maybe among these kinds of circles this was their way of socializing. They agreed, but on the way to head wherever they were going, Alphys was sweating more and more thinking about the implications of what this was leading to, and Undyne was mentally preparing herself to simply say no and withdraw back home if things got too bad for the doctor. When walking up the stairs to a train station, Stacy tripped and the cloth fell off. It was only for a brief moment, and only Undyne could see, but when she caught her, she asked if she was okay. "* It's alright." She pointed at the arm that had bruises all over. Some pretty bad ones among them, too. "* No, don't worry. I just tripped down some stairs at home." Undyne had trouble believing this. She had seen bruises on humans by now. This arm was so heavily bruised, it seemed more like she had fallen down the stairs at least once a day, for half a year straight at least.

Looking back, they were very relived at how things played out. Once they finally arrived, things got all the more confusing. Stacy's home, a several-story house - it was difficult to imagine them affording this, seeing as they had to live at full human costs, yet from what they told, didn't really do anything for a living. At some point, when it seemed obvious that the Monsters were wondering about this, without even saying it, Patricia explained that it belonged to Stacy's mom and that she simply wasn't at home on that week. And to both Alphys' confusion and relief, what awaited them in there was not like she suspected, an afternoon of relentless perversion and depravity, but instead an extremely awkward and downright angsty three more hours of going back and forth between sitting in the kitchen and sitting in the living room, talking. Only talking. Talking about all sorts of shallow and inconsequential things - to their annoyance not even about anime, since these two weirdly tense humans seemed to have an irrational, unbending hatred for anime. And all this time, through various ways, Stacy would always draw the conversation back to how all the men were all over them, lusting after them and only waiting for an opportunity to violently grab and take advantage of them. And each time, she would go into very graphic detail on all the things those men tripping over themselves to get their hands on her, would do to her, and she would start blushing and salivating with empty eyes whenever she described this.

But this taking a long time, and seeming even longer, didn't mean it lasted forever. When it got late enough to justify leaving, Undyne made an excuse and finally got Alphys out of there and ready to guide the two of them home. Stacy's place wasn't far away from that very wealthy district, and didn't exactly look like a poor neighbourhood either, so it took over an hour to get home, and as time progressed, Undyne could see how the lizard that was leading her home was becoming more and more relaxed, until, once they got off the train at the Farfoot station, the stress was all but gone. All the more, she was happy, when they were back in their home, with the door closed and locked. Before doing anything else, Alphys hurried downstairs to make sure the footage was secured. She would have to edit it to remove parts that made it obvious, who had recorded it. But right after that she came back up to go over everything they had seen that day. And together, they, without any problems, came to agree absolutely, that this was the first and last chapter of their lives, in which they would willingly involve themselves with any of the things they had seen and heard that day. Undyne just had to look for someone other than Miranda to befriend.


	40. A KNIGHT'S COOLEST MOVES

.

A Knight's Coolest Dish

Chapter 07

A KNIGHT'S COOLEST MOVES

* * *

Ever since the night when he - after so many years - finally made contact with the Doc, Sans kept wondering what he meant with what he told him. And how he was going to go about figuring what he had to do with it. Was he supposed to actively search for the Centaurs? It sounded more like something that was gonna happen either way. And the Doc knew him way too well to expect him to actively search for them, unless he expressly told him to. For the time being, it was probably best to take the Doc's words to heart. The world was still standing. There were challenges he overcame before, whatever came for him, he could do as well. He spent the next Morning sleeping. Noon just consisted of reading a dissertation in the field of Astrophysics that he had finagled from the campus, to keep ahead with how far the humans had gotten with this kinda stuff on their own. Or as far as Papy would know, a book on puns.

He was, as always, sitting on the sofa when Papyrus came home with yet another pair of bags full of ingredients and utensils to practise for whatever new kind of cuisine he was taking to learn this week. "* so, where're ya headed this time?"

"DIMITRIOS. AT LEAST THAT'S WHAT IT SAYS AT THE DOOR. I DON'T RECALL ANYONE CALLED DIMITRIOS THERE THOUGH."

"* ya got it written down anywhere?"

"IN FACT, I DO." His brother pulled up and demonstratively held up a very rustic-looking - post card. On one side was an image of a little open theatre made of white stone and encircled by clean, white pillars. The outside, both above and below, was lined with laurels. But in the theatre stood creatures he hadn't seen before. At least not too often. They had the lower body of a horse, a humanoid chest with arms, covered in brown fur, and a horse's head.

"* what're those?"

"FUNNY. I ASKED THE EXACT SAME QUESTION AND THEY DIDN'T LIKE THAT AT ALL. THEY'RE CALLED CENTAURS." Oh god. "THEY HAVE A VERY INTERESTING COOKING HABIT. THEY SERVE THEIR FOOD COLD! I HAVEN'T EVEN STARTED MY CLASSES AND I LIKE THEM ALREADY."

He tore the card out of Papyrus' hand completely. "* i dunno if that's a good idea, pap."

Sans' brother waved away his worries. "BOGUS. THEY MAY BE A LITTLE STRANGE, BUT WHAT ISN'T UP HERE? JUST GIVE THEM A CHANCE. I AM SURE THEY ARE MUCH NICER THAN ORCS."

He sighed and shrugged. "* whatever ya say." While Papyrus placed all the stuff on the table to get ready to experiment with any Centaur-style recipes he found on the internet, Sans got up and left. He couldn't stop Papy from going there. Even if he kept the post card he had noted down the address on. Papyrus would just look it up again or find it through some other means. It was probably best if he stoke out the place himself. He had the address, so he found it quickly. Stocked up with another dissertation, burgers and sandwiches, he sat on a rooftop on the opposite road to keep an eye on it from the outside. Indeed all sorts of non-human creatures went in and out of this place. Most of which were those horse creatures that needed the doors to be taller and wider than any normal place, just to easily get through.

Eventually, something interesting happened. A whole group of those Centaurs came to visit. Three of them were wearing a few metal plates on their shoulders and the sides of their legs and were walking in and out with spears, with no sign of expecting any regulations on weapons being enforced. The one behind them was wielding a staff with many random objects, some hand-crafted, some just nuts and stones and was covered in expensive-looking furs over a long, green silken robe with golden strands woven into the whole of it. Once they came back out, he trailed them. No train they entered, no stretch they galloped was enough to shake him. Not that they knew they were being followed though. By the time they reached their destination, it had long gotten dark. They came to a stop in a village on a high rock plateau, far away from Enkate City, made of wooden huts. The only lights came from torches and a campfire. Zapping from cover to cover, Sans got closer in hopes of getting in hearing range. They met with a whole regiment of more Centaurs. Judging from the numbers, there was no way, they all lived here. This was some major gathering, so he did what he could to get even closer. Eventually, on a rock not far away, he settled down, since he could hear them from here.

"* Elder Theiresias! We can wait for the others for as long as you like but I do not intend to waste any time waiting for them myself.", the one leading the visiting troop went on.

The well-decorated and older looking one began to explain to him - presumably - why they were all here. "* The Enkate branch of Dimitrios was approached by a Monster last morning." A Monster and last morning. Sans could guess that it was his brother they were talking about.

"* You mean the ones from below?"

"* Yes. They are becoming a worry I cannot ignore. Where any other Monsters go, the white ones will soon follow."

One of the men behind the elder hooked into their discussion. "* Isn't the one on the picture a white one too?" White as well? Yep, definitely Papyrus.

A tired laugh escaped the elder. "* He may be white from head to toe, but does he have horns? Fur? Claws? No, he is weak and insignificant. A human in all but the make-up of his body. It is always the white ones that we must worry about. Where their subjects go, they will follow, thus their subjects become our worry as well."

The one leading the troop that was visiting this encampment seemed pretty impatient and the sound in his voice told Sans that he didn't see how anything about Papyrus visiting some Centaur restaurant was in any way important. "* This is of no significance. As long as the white ones don't tread on our lands, why would I care? Let him visit our businesses and try to cook."

"* You imbecile!" The visitor's apathy was infuriating the elder. "* Have you no idea of our history with the white ones? They have every reason to seek us out and take revenge and trust me, we would not survive that. Not a single one of us. No man, no woman, no child! No Centaur is safe, as long as the white ones and everyone that comes with them, think they can safely tread the surface. They will find us, they will remember us, and whether their king wills this or not, this is a threat to all of our lives! They must return to the Underground if we are to live. Have I made myself clear? Their power is beyond your imagination and their rage will be unavoidable."

The visitors' leader swallowed, took a few seconds to think about this, and then came up with something new. "* No, I understand. I have a grasp on the destruction a single one of them wreaked on an entire army of Orcs, armed and equipped with beasts they thought could take down one of them with ease. But if they are truly such mighty creatures, then we cannot take them on in battle either way. How about the following? We intimidate the white ones, not by threatening them, but by threatening their subjects. Among the weaker Monsters, there must be some that are weak and untrained enough for us to topple. If most Monsters have to fear death on the surface, their king will not have a choice but to have them retreat and seal the entrance once more."

"* I second this notion." From the troop behind him, another armed Centaur came forward. He was wearing leather over his upper body and similar leather coverings were laid across both sides of his lower body. "* Let him have his cooking classes. Lure him into a false sense of security. When he trusts us fully, I will challenge him this week and devastate and kill him one week later. The Monsters will see the error in staying up here." Oh god. This couldn't be happening. A dark and impossible to banish shadow crept up Sans' spine.

Elder Theiresias was approving, but wasn't yet completely convinced. "* Sounds appealing. Tell me, what is your name?"

The one in question raised his spear and shouted. "* Spearman Alessio, great elder."

"* Do you see yourself confident to overcome whatever this man may hold in store."

Alessio grinned. "* Of course." He stepped back and put both hands together with their palms facing each other. Within seconds, blue light gathered within them, surrounded by similarly shining smoke. He pointed his hands to the sky and unleashed an entire flurry of blue orbs of magic into the skies. Magic missiles. An extremely basic kind of magic, but magic nonetheless. There were Minotaurs in the Underground, they used those for attacks, but why all this talk about fighting Papyrus and intimidating Monsters? Wait...he knew why. The Doc's long story. The reason he kept bringing them up and calling them 'traitors'. The reason Monsters could be banished to the Underground using magic, even though humans couldn't cast any spells. This was what the Elder was referring to, when he mentioned 'their history'.

He thought about asking Asgore, but the Doc, who never existed now, played a major role in it, so who knew what Asgore was gonna tell him? Either way, it seemed the Centaurs knew what they had done, and were intent on taking it out on Papyrus. He had to warn him. No, that wouldn't work. Papyrus was such a trusting person, he wouldn't believe him if Sans tried to explain to him that they're ill-intentioned. Could he even comprehend such a concept as a bad person? Then again, he was aware that Orcs weren't so nice, so possibly. Then again, it was Papyrus, and it took him seeing a grown Orc gleefully slaughtering an innocent woman and her child before his very eyes before he started thinking they weren't nice. There was no such event that could prepare him to think the same about Centaurs.

For a moment, he had a dark thought. The Doc said not to spare a single Centaur, right? And there was a whole bunch of Centaurs right here. And he was facing an elder. He could have just murdered every last Centaur that was here, right? If they were Monsters, they'd just collapse into dust, not like humans knew anything to do with that. Then again, the Doc had also said that the elder was supposed to order Sans' death, and that hadn't happened here. He was already half a step out from the rock he was hiding behind, ready to cover the entire area in an avalanche of bones and the beams of Gaster Blasters, when he caught himself and remembered that last detail that hadn't happened here. The Elder hadn't ordered Sans' death. This probably wasn't the moment the Doc was referring to. And just yesterday was one of their Friday evening get-togethers, now with Tori and Asgore. Even before those, based on the patterns in which time was reset back and in which he made contact with others online or over the phone, he could tell that Frisk was only saving once a week. Probably to make sure the people he most cared about were alive and well when he did. If Sans failed and anything happened to Papyrus, he could always turn to Frisk for help. He just would rather if it didn't come to that.

"* What was that?" They had spotted him, but by the time anyone was looking in his exact direction he was already gone and zapping his way back to Shoneon Village. If they went through with this plan, he would find out in the course of this week. Then he had one week to prepare Papyrus. Oh god, one week was nowhere near enough. Granted, this body that the Doc had given him, made him adapt to a rough training schedule but would it adapt enough to be ready for combat within two weeks? And not even that, they were Monsters. Both Papyrus and those Centaurs. Without the smallest intent to genuinely hurt his opponent, how was Papyrus gonna beat that guy? He probably even had some LOVE accumulated, judging from the expression on his face when he talked about what he wanted to do.

Back at home, even skipped the entrance door, and teleported right into his room. He couldn't do much more than shove all the stuff off his bed, lie down and cover his face with his trembling hands. He needed to think. What could he do? There had to be some sort of solution. The entire night, he didn't close an eye. He just thought about what he was going to do. He was certain he wasn't gonna take his eyes off Papy or that place he went to, whenever he did. He was just going to just happen to visit the place every single day that Papyrus was there to be taught. He was strong enough, he could beat anything those Centaurs threw at him. The problem wasn't himself. Papyrus was nowhere near strong enough to fight and be certain to win. He didn't know at what speeds a skeleton like the two of them got stronger or weaker. Wait...a skeleton being stronger...no. He couldn't do that. A thought he tried to avoid had occurred to him. Then again putting him through this kind of pain was better than putting his life at risk. He could make Papy stronger. Much stronger. Probably for all that mattered, Sans could make him stronger than he himself could ever be. The Doc's workbench with which he could do that was still there and working.

But even if he did that, how strong should he make him? How strong is strong enough, how strong is too strong? What would the Doc do if he was here? He tried to close his eye-sockets and imagine him. To ask the imaginary Doc in his mind, what he would say? What would he say if he was here, and Sans could ask him how much power would be too much power?

" Too much?" His imagined version of the Doc asked with a mix of agitation, disappointment and to be honest, madness. " What do you mean, too much? I can finally see the Adaptable Skeleton MKII field tested in combat and you're asking me how much is too much? G-Nerators, teleportation, power converter, install absolutely everything and crank his new power amplifier to the max! I want to see what he is capable of!" Okay maybe asking the Doc for advice wouldn'ta been such a good idea anyways. Either way, he wouldn't panic the way Sans was right now. Deep within the happy-go-lucky shell of his, he'd be his cold, rational self and come up with a way to solve or survive this. Or observe the situation until he did. Since he couldn't come up with something better for the time being, he stuck to that.

"* say, papyrus..." When his brother came down the stairs on the next morning, Sans was already back on the sofa, reading as always. "* seem pretty interesting, those centaurs."

"INDEED. I AM ALREADY LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING THE SECRETS TO HOW THEY MAKE THEIR CHEESE HAVE THIS EXTRA REFRESHING NOTE TO IT."

"* yeah, you think all this is a good idea? if this is what you like, maybe you should try something else for until you're generally better. maybe you can make their food stick."

"NONSENSE, SANS. IF THIS IS REALLY IT, I CAN ALWAYS COME BACK TO THIS, LATER."

Sans shrugged. "* whatever, mind if i join ya this time?"

"WHY WOULD I? IT WOULD DO YOU SOME SERIOUS GOOD TO HAVE SOMETHING TO DO."

"* nah, i thought more like just visiting."

"STILL BETTER THAN LAZYING ABOUT HERE."

"* point taken." Trying to convince him was pointless. So he just had to lie in wait.

In the week that followed, every afternoon, Sans sat in the car with Papyrus and didn't leave Dimitrios', until it was time to go home again. Every time - and far more than once - he exchanged hostile glances with those horse Monsters that went in and out of that place. It was like they knew he knew. Or at least had some inkling that he knew. From what it seemed though, they were teaching him to prepare meals the way they did them completely normally. The plan of that guy from Saturday was being followed to the word. Until on Thursday, the day had come. The same horse-man from Sunday, Spearman Alessio, barged into the restaurant shortly after the two of them had arrived and banged his fist on the table. "* I seek the Monster! The white one clad in armor!"

From around the corner, Papyrus peeked out into the main room. "* GREETINGS, STRANGER! THAT WOULD BE ME!"

Why not have some fun along the way. Sans raised a finger. "* ya know, skeletons aren't actually white ones, i think you're getting two kinds of monsters mixed up."

Alessio's upper body shot right in Sans' direction. "* What would you even know about that?" Sans shrugged without a word. Good to give him a bit of insecurity and keep him guessing how he'd know about how Centaurs describe Boss Monsters. He shook his head and got himself back on track. "* Armored one! What is your name?"

"...PAPYRUS?"

"* Papyrus! You Monsters are an insult to us and anyone who lives on the surface! I will expose your weakness! I hereby challenge you to a duel in combat!"

"* ya know ya can always duel me."

"* Shut up, this is between me and him!"

"* sheesh."

Unfortunately, Papyrus was actually pumped for this, not scared of it. "OH BOY. I HAVEN'T HAD MY SKILLS TESTED IN A LONG TIME! CONSIDER YOUR CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!" He took off one of his kitchen mitts and threw it down on the table in front of the Centaur. "WHERE WILL WE MEET FOR THIS FRATERNAL RITUAL!"

"* At the forsaken rock! To the east of here is a tiny valley, between three walls of untouched stone! That is where we will fight. Today in a week at sundown!"

Papyrus gave him a wink. "TODAY IN A WEEK IT IS! SHOULD I PREPARE SOME PUZZLES?"

The Centaur rolled his eyes. "* Do whatever you think necessary, but know that great shame will come upon you, if you think to bow out of this!" Without another word, he left, and Papyrus went back to whatever they were doing in the kitchen.

Once they were done and the two of them were back in his car, he started gushing over his anticipation for this. "I CAN'T WAIT TO MAKE SOME NEW CENTAUR FRIENDS! THIS WILL BE GLORIOUS."

"* pap, i'll be honest, i don't think he's out to make friends with you."

"NONSENSE. GIVING EACH OTHER PUZZLES AND FIGHTING THEM IS OBVIOUSLY HOW PEOPLE ON THE SURFACE MAKE FRIENDS."

"* if ya say so. either way, you'd probably better to your best not to disappoint there." With his arms behind his back, he thought. He had put things off, and now the duel was imminent. He had to come up with something. And not just quick, but now. And he couldn't, so he just sighed. "* screw this, desperate times."

"* PARDON?"

"* pap, you remember that place where you got your special attack?"

"* YES?"

"* on a scale from yay to nope, how much would you like it if you went through that again, but turned like, really really strong?"

"HOW STRONG ARE WE TALKING?"

"* undyne's favorite cartoon levels of strong, i think."

From one moment to the next, Papyrus' googley-eyes stuck out and he hit the breaks, while in the middle of the road. It was so sudden you could hear the tire grinding against the road. "HOLY BALONEY! THAT IS PRETTY STRONG!"

"* so is that a yay or a nope?"

"A YAY! ALL THE YAYS! LET'S GO RIGHT NOW!" When they were already in Shoneon Village, they came by a central crossing and instead of heading for their house on the surface, Papyrus made straight for the cliff that led to the Underground's entrance. And he did so at breakneck speed. He parked it right outside the big door. On their way through Asgore's house, Sans kept asking him if he was really sure about this, and reminded him that it was gonna hurt a lot. But his answer remained the same, over and over. Even to the very moment he was already strapped to the machine, Sans had made all the maxed-out adjustments the Doc woulda wanted him to, and was asked once again if he was sure. "BEAUTY KNOWS NO PAIN AND NEITHER DOES STRENGTH! DO YOUR WORST SANS! I AM PREPARED FOR EVERYTHING!"

"* you sure? if i do this, you gotta promise me, you're gonna let me train you to use that power moderately. it'll be pretty hard and you'll have to skip on next week's cooking classes"

"I WILL GET THROUGH ALL THAT I NEED TO! PULL THE LEVER ALREADY!"

"* okay..." He took one more deep breath. He was gonna be fine. He suffered through this once, he'll do it again. So he did what he had to, laughed like a crazy person and pulled the lever. He couldn't bear to watch, but before he knew, it was already over. The sounds of the machine and Papyrus' screams had already died down.

"IS IT DONE? DO I HAVE SUPER STRENGTH NOW? KAAMEEE..."

"* stop! whatever that's gonna do, I don't wanna blow up the place." Luckily, the enormous arcane missile that was forming in his brother's hands was vanishing into thin air, the moment he asked him not to do that.

With the straps removed, Papyrus got up. "ARE YOU SURE IT WORKED. I SOMEHOW DON'T REALLY FEEL STRONGER. I ACUAY FL PY..." His orange G-Nerators started flashing up and Papyrus turned faster and faster.

Sans needed to use his own power converter to bring himself up to speed to calm him down. "* slow down, you're way too fast."

"SLOW DOWN?" He turned back to normal within seconds. "SO THAT IS WHAT THAT WAS. OKAY. EASY ENOUGH, LET'S GO." He didn't 'go' though, but was instantaneously at the exit. He had teleported himself to the exit. And it took him a few seconds to process what he had just done. "WOW...COULD YOU ALWAYS DO THAT?"

"* kinda."

"WOWIE! TO THIS DAY, YOU ARE FULL OF SURPRISES, SANS."

"* gotta keep things fresh." Any excitement was over. The week was nearing it's end. The Friday went down pretty uneventfully, and the evening was a happy little feast for all seven of them as if nothing bad or worrying was going on. He had asked Papyrus to keep quiet about his little increase in power, but Sans could already guess that Undyne would notice and want to talk to him about this one week later. In fact, she asked him on Friday evening already. And he wanted to tell her about this duel with Spearman Alessio, once everyone else wasn't listening, but Papyrus blurted out that part with no hesitation. Shocking everyone.

Undyne. "* Are you crazy?"

Asgore. "* Why didn't you bring them to me?"

Frisk. "* No! There's got to be another way."

Even Toriel. "* Are you sure this is a good idea?"

"MY MIND IS ALREADY MADE UP. YOU ARE ALL FREE TO ATTEND AND CHEER ME ON." He pointed his thumb at his chest and raised his head in pride. "I WILL WIN THIS DUEL, BRING HONOUR TO US MONSTERS AND MAKE NEW FRIENDS!"

Frisk was all the more confused about this. After all, he had no idea what Centaurs were. "* Dad, why is this happening?"

Their king stroked the back of the human's head. "* Our likely future with the Centaurs is a troubled one. But this is beyond cowardly. Their quarrel is with me, and no-one else. That they approach anyone other than me, speaks volumes."

"* Why? Why does any of this have to be?" Of course it was hard for a kid like him to understand. In any conflicts Sans remembered Frisk running into, he could just revert time and prevent any conflicts or previous wrongdoings. Situations where the wrongdoing has already happened and couldn't be undone were something he couldn't really get. "* Can't we somehow befriend them?"

"* Not so easily at least." Asgore closed his eyes for a moment. "* If they have made their move this way, they see themselves threatened. We need to show them that they couldn't scare us away if they wanted to. Sans. Papyrus."

"* yeah?"

"YES?"

"* Do you think you are fit to overcome this challenge? Are you absolutely sure, you will come out on top? I need to be assured of this."

And for a moment, Papyrus wasn't so sure after all. "I..." But he only avoided eye-contact very briefly. "...YES. YES I WILL. AND FLAWLESSLY AT THAT."

"* woah there, ground control to pap. big words."

"OF COURSE I WILL. I HAVE TRAINED SO MUCH WITH UNDYNE. THIS WILL BE CHILD'S PLAY." No-one was one-hundred per cent assured of this. But most of them knew that Frisk could guide them all out of harms way if things got really bad, and Toriel wasn't involved enough. Undyne musta already noticed what had happened to Papyrus, so she was at least more confident. For the rest of the evening, everyone was weighed down by what they had talked about. Everyone seemed like they wanted to say something, but nobody actually did, even though there was plenty of opportunity to say something. Undyne didn't even bother to ask what exactly had happened that Papyrus had suddenly gotten an even better stamina. She just accepted it.

The next morning, Sans had much better sleep, but was woken up at about six 'o clock. "SURPRISE, LAZYBONES! WE'RE GOING TO TRAIN EARLY!" With an insufferable rumble, he was knocking on his bedroom door. Sans was still rubbing his eye-socket, when he opened the door. His radiant-looking brother jumped and floated downstairs, the moment Sans could see him. "COME ON, LET'S GO. THERE ARE NO EXCUSES TO DELAY THIS ANY MORE!"

"* yeah, yeah gimme a sec." He headed down to the sink, splashed some water on his face to wake himself up properly, and followed right after his lively brother. "* wait, better fetch some stuff." While Papyrus waited in the car, Sans went to the back to get some stuff they could use. He was driven to a nearby sports park, used for ball games, but unused as early as this. "* so, now you wanna know how to control your powers."

"YEP. UP, READY AND EAGER TO LEARN!" Papyrus stood straight and saluted.

"* all right." Sans nodded, grinned and went to the car to get a football. Clear black and white, easy to spot, even if high up in the sky. The first of his abilities, that Sans planned on training him to use properly was his telekinesis, but he he had mastered that already, before the day had started. After that, he went through the basic use of all of them. Papyrus learned stuff like teleportation really fast. Where there was trouble, was controlling the extent to which he used his G-Nerators. Based on the pattern of how much power he put into each bone attack and how he reacted to it, Sans guessed that Papyrus wasn't really using them consciously, even though the bright orange glow in his eyes was really conspicuous. In fact, before he got the hang of it, the first football Sans pulled up for this was already broken and squashed, and their practise had left a little dent or two in the red rubber floor of the public ball park. "* now remember..." He had to make clear to him that that part was important. "* never go too fast. in fact, best if ya don't go fast at all at the beginning. all power you put into speed, you're taking from somewhere else. and it gets really dangerous if ya don't watch out." He did give it a few tries though, but after running into a wall once too often, Papyrus came to the conclusion that he better didn't use the power converter at all. Probably best that way anyway.

The entire following week, every day, a few hours after Papyrus came back from the Enkate Barracks, they spent a few hours practising until he could use his new powers with precision. Then, Thursday came around, and it was time for Papyrus' trial by fire. Even though they traveled separately, everyone went to the location the Centaur had described to the two skeletons. It would have been easier to find, if he had told them that it was also a grove at the edge of a forest, but in the end, it was impossible not to find, and asking passerbys helped them find their way eventually. The walls of rock were rough and not even, they had somehow naturally formed. Either that, or they were carved with little to no direction. When Papyrus' car arrived, the Dreemurrs and Frisk were already waiting. Above them stood three Centaurs. One of them, Sans could identify as Elder Theiresias. In a shallow but broad earthen pit in the ground, just between where the walls converged the man who challenged Papyrus stood by and waited.

While the skeletons, Alphys and Undyne were getting out of the car and setting themselves up to watch, Asgore stepped forward to talk to the elder. "* Is this really necessary? Am not I the one you would want to challenge?"

The elder stretched out his staff to gesture him to stop. "* This does not involve you, only the skeleton." Undyne and Alphys got out some folding chairs, Alphys put down two heavy, thermal boxes, one contained cold food, one warm food.

Sans picked up nothing but a trombone and leaned against the wall, much closer to the arena than all the others. From between the trees, more armed Centaurs appeared, two of which headed straight to him to point their spears at him. "* What do you think you are doing."

He shrugged, with the instrument still in his hand. "* hey, it's just a trombone, right? besides, this is a duel, right? what're you afraid of?" His eyes darkened. "* That someone might get in the way if you cheat in this duel?" Whether he scared them off, or they simply had no comeback, they retreated and left him to his own devices.

"* Step forward, Papyrus!", the elder above shouted. The skeleton obliged, stood at the edge of the pit with fresh kitchen mitts and a polished battle body and saluted. "* You have been challenged to a duel. Close combat weapons and magic are allowed. This is not a duel to the death. You must let your opponent live." A lie, Sans clearly heard Alessio say he was gonna kill Papyrus if he won. They weren't playing fair, why should he? Sans was ready to step in and stop them if it in any way got too bad for Papyrus. The tension rose and was visible in the eyes of everyone. Everyone that wasn't a Centaur at least, these guys were grinning. They knew damn well that the elder had lied.

With a few more steps forward, Papyrus committed to standing and fighting. "MAY THE BETTER ONE WIN!"

The Centaur bore his teeth with a malicious smile as he raised his speed. "* May he indeed." He opened up with one single, minor arcane bolt. A single, regular looking bone shot out of the ground and deflected it. Not impressed yet, the Centaur pinned his spear to the ground, held both hands open and prepared two. Papyrus stood there, motionlessly and two more bones shot up and deflected both missiles. Alessio tried it again with three. And then four. And then five. But their target practise paid off. Nothing he launched at the skeleton actually got anywhere near it's destination. Sans saw through the trick though. He had taught it to him. Papyrus was speeding himself up, just a bit, so he could see all the attacks coming his way, long before they arrived and prepare accordingly.

Once he was at eight, the smiling skeleton finally made a move. And 'a move' meant he kept standing still but spoke up. "IS IT MY TURN YET?"

The Centaur, annoyed by his formal shenanigans, grunted, but then placed one of his four legs a bit further behind to try and bow, as far as his body allowed it. "* Please, be my guest then. Consider it your turn."

Papyrus' smile widened. "OKAY. LET'S TRY SOMETHING SIMPLE FIRST." He stretched out one hand to the side. Out of the wall behind the centaur, giant bones, over three times the size of the Centaur shot out and moved rapidly towards him, threatening to ram and crush him. He couldn't just jump over them though, because a little further upwards came more bones from the same angle. The only way to not get hit was a little platform in-between that Papyrus placed in the way, but of course he didn't get it right at once, got smashed in the head by the upper bones launched and fell down to the ground, grinding against the solid earth on his knees. "HMM, A LITTLE MUCH, SHOULD I MAKE IT EASIER?"

With the bones fading away, and the hurt Centaur getting up, he flinched. "* No! I will not be embarrassed by the likes of you!"

"OKAY THEN. SO YOU WANT SOMETHING HARDER?"

Finally, the guy's malicious anticipation was turning into anger. "* Is this some sort of game to you?" Sans took up the opportunity to start playing a looped tune with his trombone. The same one he always used to accompany Papyrus with whatever he did when he felt like doing so. In the course of the fight, he barely picked up when that started, a choir of Temmies came out of nowhere and joined him, some with their voices, two with a xylophone.

Papyrus eyed him up, trying to make sense of what he was saying. "I DON'T UNDERSTAND. ISN'T THIS HOW MONSTERS FIGHT? THE HUMAN CERTAINLY DIDN'T COMPLAIN."

"* Human? Which one?" Alessio looked around, and more or less ignored Frisk, until he couldn't since he was the only human here. "* Certainly you don't mean that one."

"YES, THAT IS THE ONE. HE CAN DODGE ALL THE ATTACKS WITHOUT FAIL."

He was getting more and more infuriated by what Papyrus was telling him. "* This is a child! There is no way he could - are you trying to be funny?" He snorted audibly. And sounded one-to-one like a regular horse while doing so. "* Now you wait!" He picked up his spear and was about to charge in Papyrus' direction, but immediately, another bone came out of nowhere and struck his long horseface in a way that completely stumped all his movements.

Papyrus raised a hand and a finger, poking ever so slightly through his mitts. "NOW WAIT! IT'S NOT YOUR TURN YET!"

The Centaur's hands were trembling with anger. If his face wasn't covered in fur, it would probably be red from sheer anger. "* There are no turns! This isn't a game."

"IT IS A DUEL - NOT TO THE DEATH - A SIMULATION OF COMBAT WITH RITUALISTIC CHARACTER. YOU ARE WRONG. THIS IS A GAME IN EVERY SENSE. AAAAND NOW IT IS YOUR TURN."

Once more, Alessio flinched, but with a smile. He stretched out his hands and opened them with the palms inside. Fragments of blue light appeared and converged, forming a larger and larger orb. Papyrus genuinely just stood there. With his arms crossed. And watched as the orb grew. And grew. Until it had at least twice the diameter of the space the Centaur was originally holding open for. When his wrinkled-up face grinned again, he stretched them in Papyrus' direction to unleash a massive wave of arcane energy, which was blocked, completely and without any problems, by a thin, transparent blue wall of bones. The power he had collected for this attack was so large, you could hear the pure energy surging through the air as it ground against the unyielding wall. And Papyrus neither moved, nor flinched, nor sweated, nor ran out of breath. You could see his eyes flash up in bright orange, but that was the only indicator that he was making any effort at all. This was nothing to him.

When the panting Centaur's attack died down and faded, the last particles falling to the ground and vanishing before they even got to the wall he got a word in again. "OKAY. NOW IT'S MY TURN. LET'S GO WITH SOMETHING YOU CAN BETTER ADJUST TO." The skeleton hopped in place, kept his arms folded up and started dancing a pirouette and moving around from corner to corner while doing so. Around him, arm-length long bones manifested and circled in his orbit. And then new rows added themselves above and below the first ones. And then new ones added themselves one more length further away from him. Dodging the skeleton and the construct of spinning bones that was forming around him was easy at first, a mere matter of running to the side. Alessio even got the time to ready an arcane missile or two to shoot in his opponent's direction, none of which were not blocked by bones though. But new rows of bones added themselves around the skeleton over and over, until - first - most of the arena, then all of the arena was filled with bones and the unmanageable object Papyrus had become was spinning in his direction, collided with him and launched him several metres to the side. When he noticed the Centaur being back on the ground, Papyrus disspelled the bones and hopped in place once to comfortably stand his ground again. "COME ON, PUT A LITTLE BACKBONE INTO THIS. I'M SURE THE HUMAN WOULD COME UP WITH SOME PATTERN TO ESCAPE THIS ONE."

"* No...", Alessio whispered. Slowly, the probably pretty weak Centaur propped himself back up. "* I refuse to be shown up like this." All of his body started to tremble. The same blue, shining particles he collected for his major attack before, were starting to form and gather all around his body. "* I will be the champion of my people! I will bring them safety!" Gradually, leg for leg, he started to slightly float up into the air, while more and more of his body began to gleam in the bright light of the prepared attack he was saturating himself with. "* You are not even a white one! You are nothing but a measly clown!" Once you could barely make out the savage's shape from the white glow that outshone his shape, he screamed and unleashed the entirety of it. It all shot straight towards Papyrus, and Sans was the only one fast enough to see what was really happening. From the ground, at a speed most probably couldn't follow, endless amounts of small bones were firing up to counter an enormous wave of arcane bolts, each one countered with ease, but the bones deflecting the Centaur's attacks - this time - weren't just vanishing when they fulfilled their purpose, but fell to the ground, piling up higher and higher around the two. "* Why won't you die?!" Alessio screamed once more, revealing that even now, he was holding back and let loose an even stronger flurry of attacks, which didn't do any a better job at actually getting through to Papyrus than any before had. Papryus' flurry of blocking bone attacks simply gained the intensity it needed to match the Centaur's. His last scream lasted, and lasted and lasted, until the light faded, he stopped floating and fell down to the ground.

Alessio had collapsed behind a large pile of bones, the two piles to the sides of the two of them were taller than either of them "DO YOU GIVE UP?"

"* No!"

"THEN IT IS MY TURN." With a single stern step, Papyrus stretched one hand downwards and held his hand up to the side in an effeminate manner, while placing the other on his chest for a glorious pose and mounted the pile of bones between them, which began to shift at the side and carried him in a wide circle around the entire arena, growing and carrying him higher and higher as it grew from all the bones it passed adding themselves to the growing mass. The grinding and clacking noises from bones colliding with bones grew louder and louder. Papyrus didn't even need his eyes open for this. The pile carried him in three more circles around the arena, with the still collapsed Centaur on the ground, so everyone could see him a few times, before the moving mountain completely overran him, buried him in bones, and had the motionless skeleton glide down past him and onto the ground. When the bones vanished, the Centaur was still lying on the ground, grunts of pain escaped him, and with his back turned to him, Papyrus stood there in all his glory, in the exact same victorious pose he started his attack with. He remained still for a few seconds, before he finally turned around. "YOU CAN NO LONGER FIGHT. ADMIT IT. CONSIDER YOURSELF..." He made a swiping gesture with his hand. "...SPARED!"

In a sudden hurry, the elder and all the Centaurs, both above and below, retreated. They all abandoned Alessio and left him alone on the ground. The most powerful Centaur around here. Probably the most powerful one to ever exist. Left in the sand by a skeleton that not only had never seriously fought before, but hadn't been fighting seriously this time, either. Soon, everyone left, leaving only Sans to loom over the trembling horseman. "* so, uh, why the long face?"

I mean seriously, he didn't even use any Gaster Blasters.


	41. inevitable judgment

.

A Knight's Coolest Dish

Chapter 08

inevitable judgment

* * *

Everyone had come home safely from Papyrus' encounter with a Centaur. By now, all excitement had died down. Even Sans was just sitting on the settee as he always was, reading scientific literature cloaked in a loop of scientific literature and joke books. Even though he pretty much already knew that this wasn't the last of them he'd see. The Elder hadn't ordered Sans' death, so what the time-travelling Doc was talking about, still hadn't happened. He would have loved to tell himself that following the instructions of a time traveler went like clockwork, but it didn't. He waited the entire weekend, get-together, Papyrus seeking out a new culinary style to cook in, and all. Nothing. By Wednesday, he started to think that maybe, the future he was referring to, had been prevented without him noticing. Then again, the Doc was smart, there was no way stuff he said would be so inaccurate. Yet, he was never really sure who or what he talked to that night.

Either way, things were becoming pretty relaxing. For a while, he even thought about using this time to start getting this doing-good thing going. Or as Alphys would call it 'being a superhero'. But he kept putting that off. It seemed like a lot of effort. He gazed out of the window. It was raining anyway. It was generally very rainy up here. Then came the knocking. Knock - knock-knock-knock - knock knock - knock - knock knock knock knock knock. Heavy banging on the wall in a very specific rhythm. It was in the middle of the following week, so Papyrus was still at the Barracks and he was the only one here. "* yeah?" A very distraught-looking, black-pink humanoid robot was standing in front of the door.

Without being asked to, he stepped right in, rolling his feet as far as his heels allowed. "* Good gracious, Sans, I am in severe need of your aid." Almost dancing into the room, he pretended to faint on the couch. For a moment.

"* so where's the shoe pinch then?"

It appeared that Mettaton took this as Sans agreeing to help before knowing any details. "* I am so thankful that you hear me out. I don't even know where to turn to any more. I asked the doctor, but she referred me right to you. She said you're the best help there is out there."

Sans nodded. "* did she now?"

Mettaton got up to walk circles as he fanned air to his head with his hands. "* Yes! It is a catastrophe! If it doesn't stop and makes rounds, our ticket sales will drop like a pebble off a cliff!"

He seemed to have trouble getting to the point. "* okay...what is this catastrophe?"

"* It's the attendance!" Mettaton stood with his back to Sans, and dramatically turned his upper body around. "* Humans visiting my show, and then disappearing! They vanish! Nobody knows where they went. It has to stop! And quickly!"

"* disappearing humans? i thought that's just a conspiracy theory."

Sans wasn't sure if Mettaton didn't take what he was talking about seriously, or whether he just couldn't help the silly gestures. Nonetheless, he placed both hands on his own cheeks to cry out: "* Oh please, not you too!" Next, towering over him, he started shouting. "* That is exactly what the police told me, too! And one detective! But they're real, their families contact me, they have photos, birth certificates, the humans exist! And they're gone! They never come back home!"

Sans shrugged. "* either way, they can't just be 'gone'. they've gotta be somewhere."

"* I have no idea where they could be going!"

For a few seconds, nothing was said. This time though, Sans quickly came up with an idea. It was put together from similar ideas that didn't have a purpose yet. But now they had one. "* ya know what? yea. i'm lookin' into that. but i got some conditions."

"* Yes, please, anything you need!" Hunched forward, Mettaton put both hands together.

"* we exchange numbers. any other human disappears, ya call me right away. first thing. asap. drop everything else and call me. remember their name and anything i need to find who they are."

"* And just wait for another such travesty? Are you out of your mind?"

He needed to calm him down. "* simmer down, tinny. so long as you do exactly as i say, i promise faithfully, not a single other human's gonna come to harm. ya got my word."

Still pretending to hyperventilate, the robot saw reason. "* All right. All your conditions and not a single other human really comes to harm."

With his eyes closed, Sans nodded and stretched his hand out. "* those are conditions i can work with. your problem's as good as solved." For the time being, he was just glad the flamboyant machine was out of the house. Nevertheless, he didn't have a choice but to help. Even if he limited himself to looking out for Monsters' well-being. If humans visited theatre run by Monsters and disappeared right after that, this was bound to come back to haunt them. Unless he did something about it. But, thinking it through, Mettaton holds his show, show ends, humans leave, one disappears. There was no way of telling ahead of time, who it would be. That they vanished from within was unlikely, since they had surveillance set up in there. Surveillance footage wouldn't show them actually getting abducted, without the staff finding out. Something occurred to him. It wouldn't show them getting abducted, but it might give a rough point in the right direction.

"* wait!" He caught Mettaton before he could get into the large, extravagantly coloured bus he used to travel between the village and the city and tipped on his solid shoulder. "* you got some surveillance on the last person that went missing?"

"* Naturally! Do come along!" He waved Sans to get in the bus, so he locked the door to his and Papyrus' house and followed. In an upper floor of Mettaton's club, several computers were set up, with Monsters examining exactly what Sans had asked for. "* We have him leaving, but that is all we have. We had no idea something would happen."

Sans calmed him down and specified. "* i just wanna see the very last moments of him leaving this place." A crocodile that barely fitted into his seat, pulled up a cut-out video of several people passing through the outside of the exit and pointed at a man among them. "* so that's the guy, huh?" Didn't seem out of the ordinary. Just a young man with short hair and a casually looking jacket. In the outside area, he stood still and looked around, before spotting something that had him take a sharp turn to the left to approach it. "* okay, that's what i was lookin' for. now, any info you got on the guy, i need here in a few minutes. i'll just check something out, be right with ya." Before they could even answer, he made for the same exit the camera was watching, stood exactly where the man in the footage was standing and took a look around. Right around the corner, to the left, was a barely upkept pizza parlour with a little stand set up in front of it's entrance. Upon coming closer, he saw that a young woman was sitting behind it. She wore a black-and-white scarf covered in squares, black lipstick, a nosering, a pair of glasses with black plastic spectacle frames and had her deep-green dyed hair stand up and shifted completely to her left side, and the right corner of her scalp completely bald.

Before he went any closer, he watched another human cross the street. "* Hey!" The woman beckoned him to come closer. "* Would you be interested in partaking in our 'Centaurescue' tour? We gather to organize tours to save Centaurs from being marginalized, and to alleviate the human advantage." The young man in the plaid shirt with suspenders she was talking to, appeared interested and ruffled his beard. He seemed to ask something, which the activist answered. "* Yes, please, come in. Take the fliers on your way in. We'd love to have you over." The human in front of her nodded and proceeded to head inside through those doors which - once covered in some intricate, colourful pattern, had half the paint that used to cover it completely splintered off already, to meet some more activists and probably get some pizza. Once he was sure, he was gone, Sans came closer as well. "* I see you've been pretty curious." She smiled.

He gave the entire stand and all the fliers, cards and booklets a good look. Just to give a rough idea of their designs, the booklet's cover featured a cartoon of a Centaur child, covered in wounds - like regular humans got how Monsters worked - with the shadow of a human with a whip looming over it. "* saving centaurs, huh?", he asked with a few nods.

The activist put on a very concerned face. "* Yes, it's a real tragedy how they've been oppressed for so long. It's really time we dismantled the human advantage."

Sans just kept nodding. "* oppressed, huh. mind explaining how that exactly happened?"

She avoided eye-contact for a moment. "* Yes, most of all these lands belonged to the Centaurs first, until humans exploited them through colonialism and took everything away. And now they're being persecuted for no reason other than being different. The rest is highly complex, it would require a great deal of education for you to understand."

Suure, that totally sounded like an accurate recounting of Atelian history. "* And this persecution, how does this exactly work?"

As if to lecture a five-year-old, she raised a finger and started rattling down: "* Humans that occupy positions of power simply have subconscious bisases. And as long as there is a single one that doesn't at all times examine their biases and mind their inherent advantage, Centaurs and other marginalized groups will always have the short end of the stick."

"* okay, subconscious biases. and it's for no actual reasons at all?"

She shook her head confidently. "* None at all. Why don't you just pick up our material? You can read all about it in there." Not taking at least one of the articles she was giving out for free was probably gonna tick her off, so he took one booklet.

Nonetheless, he was curious now. "* so, this pizza place, is it open?"

"* Of course, be our guest."

When Sans entered through the heavy and well-sealing door, the entire pizza place was only dimly lit and empty, save for a burly man with a mustache wiping the counter below the barely visible lists of menus, until the skeleton drew his attention. "* Greetings! What can I serve you?"

He had to play it cool, so he kept his hands in his pockets and looked around in a subtly nodding motion. "* i was pretty sure someone just walked in here."

The man behind the counter shook his head. "* Must be in the bathroom or something." To justify him staying here for a while, the skeleton ordered a glass of a high-sugar drink. It wasn't like he trusted the guy enough to drink it, but it made for an excuse to sit here for a while. Sometimes, the man was at the counter, sometimes he was back in the kitchen. Sans checked for the time several times and made sure to wait for more than ten minutes straight. The oddly clothed man he had seen walk in didn't come out of the bathroom. Once enough time had passed, he went to the men's room, to check. It was empty. There was nobody here. Now was the time to ask once more.

"* s'cuse me?" When he asked for his ear, the guy was in the kitchen. "* the guy that came in isn't in the bathroom either."

He just shrugged. "* Must have left then. Hell if I know." He then scratched some dirt off his mustache and went back to work in the kitchen. Okay, that was all that Sans needed. It was pretty likely that this exact place had something not so nice going on. Not touching his drink was a good decision. Who knew what was in there. When he was sure the unsuspecting employee was busy, he went around to take more of a look. The bathrooms were dead ends. Even the windows were so small, no human could fit through there. The only other exit was the 'private' door at the end of the rows of dirty tables. He assured himself once more that he wasn't being watched before teleporting to the other side of that door. It just led to a very narrow corridor with another door behind it. The door behind it was unlocked and led straight into a wide, empty and pitch black garage. From the height and width, it could hold a truck. Or several smaller vehicles. Any vehicle that was here though, was already gone. So it had happened again - probably. All he needed to do for this step was to look at the time once again and memorize it.

With all that done, he zapped himself back into the visitors' area and walked straight outside as if nothing had happened. He had Mettaton's employees waiting for long enough. He was happy to see them having compiled all personal info on the guy they had last seen vanishing into that pizza place in a few neat sheets of paper. This was all he needed in case plaid shirt guy's trail wouldn't lead him anywhere. Before long, he appeared right behind Alphys, who wasn't so surprised to see him visit her again. "* Oh, so Mettaton already talked to you?"

"* yea, looks like we got ourselves our first case. this is all they had on the guy."

Like a child, Alphys clapped her open hands once and placed the paper right in front of her while opening several tabs she was going to use to search anything on him she could find. She seemed to open anything from search engines , social media platforms, all the way to shady websites that allowed you to display what other online accounts an e-mail address or account on any platform was linked to. "* What have we got here..." She really seemed to multitask this fluently. "* ...okay he didn't make any big efforts to hide himself...or leave any traces at any irregular websites. But he seems to attend some...demonstrations at his college - that doesn't help. He's very vocal about some opinions he has. On some public groups, look right there." She pulled up several windows with HeadSheet opened up, that website that likely inspired Undernet. In a long string of comments, the guy in question was talking to some other people, about similar stuff to what the girl at the stand outside that pizza place was describing. Within it, a keyword sprung into his eyesight.

"* what's up with all this talk of 'human advantage' i'm hearing lately?"

Alphys shook at once. "* Oh god. N-n-not even you're safe from that? Just ignore it, anything involving that isn't actually true."

"* that would make a lotta sense."

The comment he spotted that word in read: "* All we can do, is to join every cause that presents itself to fight the human advantage little by little every day." 'Joining every cause'. So he was definitely very open to be talked into whatever that girl and the guy at the pizza place were offering. The next step was to enlist Frisk's help. Whether or not the kid had any idea for what.

"* okay, i've got a good lead to follow. but still what is this 'human advantage' stuff anyway?"

"* Ugh." Alphys took a moment to run her claws down her face before she tried to form words. "* It's basically any advantages that come with being the majority of the people in a country. You'll see every paper or article that brings it up talk about humans being the majority in the only countries that have any humans in them like it's a bad thing." She started cowering together in her seat and gnawing at her claws. "* Most humans don't understand what 'fighting the human advantage' really means." It meant a lot of things. But for the time being, the most important thing it meant, was that anyone considering 'human advantage' to be a bad thing, whether or not they knew they did, wanted many, many, many humans to die.

* * *

Impatiently, Frisk tapped in place with his foot on the smooth tiled floor. With his worksheet completed, he gave the clock an occasional glance on the very last minutes of Miss Tuffet's class. When the bell rang, and all other children got up to leave, though, he pulled together in shock when a very solid finger tipped his back. The one behind him fit the height, but probably not the age to visit this school. "* hey, chum." It was Sans. He was always happy to see Sans come around, even though they met at least once a week now anyway. "* so, how's school?"

"* Good. And what about you? Something on your mind?" This guy's intuition was a little better than Sans was comfortable with.

He wove any questions away and started following him through the noisy hallway. "* oh, nothing in particular. just tryin' to get my mind off stuff."

That didn't sound very good. "* What stuff?"

"* uh it's..." For a moment, he was about to tell him, but then he stopped. "* nah, you don't worry your little head." Frisk had to close his eyes for a moment when Sans ruffled his hair. A skeleton ruffling your hair felt like getting a noogie instead. "* so, wat'cha doin' today?"

They passed by a lot of young Monsters. Some staying right outside the school building, some walking further, crawling further...flying further. When it began to rain again, Sans opened an umbrella he had conveniently brought along. "* I was just going to go home. What if we got ourselves some nice cream, sat down and talked for a while?"

"* sounds neat. count me in." He gave Frisk a wink, and they turned around the corner that led to the place that the nicecream salesman had taken for his stand. It didn't sell so well in weather like this, but for the time being, he kept trying until he found some better places. "* i'm buying though." They settled down in the shelter of a bus stop, where they didn't need to keep that umbrella up. "* pretty rainy, right?"

The kid looked up at the white ceiling that was the clouds covering the sky. "* It will stop. This isn't Waterfall."

"* yea, i guess."

A few moments passed of the two of them just staring off to the sky, before Frisk broke the silence. "* What am I not supposed to worry my head about? Is there something bothering you?"

He turned back to Sans, who just smiled at him. "* it's..uh. it's complicated." He turned back to watch the increasing rain shatter on the road for a while. "* i had an opportunity to really do something good. but i wasn't sure if i should. so i hesitated and now i wasted an opportunity."

"* Oh."

"* if i'd known before that there was nothing to worry, i'da done it. all didn't turn out so well in the end." If he had known...Whatever it was. Even if he didn't want Frisk to help, he had to help. If he could only do things over again and give Sans a push in the right direction, whatever was bothering him wouldn't have happened. "* now i'm really just..."

* * *

Mid-sentence, everything stopped. The next moment, Sans found himself at Undyne and Alphys' place. With Papyrus, their hosts, the Dreemurrs and Frisk. Frisk was right here. He couldn't immediately look at his phone without some excuse, but judging from what they were talking about, from how Undyne was laughing at an impression Alphys was making of some person the two had met, the repetition took away any need for a watch. It was last Friday evening. Frisk had LOADed back time. If Sans could do this, he'd probably abuse it shamelessly to relive good times like this over and over. For the time being, he just played his role. Said and did more or less the same things he originally did. It was pretty easy, since he got all the cues for what he originally did from the others. When it was time to leave and the Dreemurrs made their way outside, Frisk stayed back to ask for Sans to come outside. As he expected, he made it clear to him that it was important, that he should trust him and take any opportunity he got to do something right. It had played out exactly the way Sans wanted to. Time was turned back. He had another shot. And now he had names, a time and a date.

Most importantly, he had time. Time to relax and sleep over the stuff he figured out. On the next morning, as soon as he expected her to sit at her computer, he headed to Alphys. "* hey there." She was more surprised this time. "* alphys from half a week ago."

"* Half a week." For a moment, she was a loss. Then the dread crept up her face. "* Oh god. Oh g-g-god, he did it, didn't he? He t-turned back time. That means something very b-b-b-ad happened! Something bad happened and now we have to stop it or it will happen again!"

She was already panicking and holding her head, when he pushed those claws back down. "* no, no worries. nothing's happened. i just got him to do it."

"* So he knows that you..."

"* nah, he doesn't."

With this, her claws hung down lifelessly. She inhaled, sat back in her chair, spun it around to face the computer and went on. "* All right. If you're here, that means..."

"* yep, need your help with something. you happen to have any tracking devices on hand? best if they're hard to detect."

She got up and went for the stairs. "* Yes, but not here. I need to get to my..." Before she could finish, Sans grabbed her hand and shortcutted the two of them a few times. Within one second, they were at the entrance to the Underground. Within another one, they were in her old lab. "* ...to my...oh." She giggled. "* Thanks." She went to turn on the lights, then headed upstairs and moved some panels of the wall in the back to the side. "* Wait, if you know this giant lab I can't get to, don't you think you have one there?"

He just leaned against the wall and waited for her to look for hers. "* don't get me wrong, there's tons of stuff down there. but i don't think regular spying equipment that's compatible with human software is among it. I need it all up and working in two days, can't waste any time with experimental stuff."

"* Fair enough." She sighed and took a breather after realizing she took off the wrong panels. She then put them back in place and went to where her tracking device really was. "* So what do we need it for anyway?"

"* to track someone."

He chuckled at how this annoyed her. "* Ha ha, very funny. Found it by the way." She came downstairs with a whole tangle of cables and a little black box. "* Please don't tell anyone I have this."

Sans gave her a grin. "* you got cameras all over the place and you think this is gonna shock anyone."

She looked pretty tired already. Tough luck, it was gonna be a long day. "* You're in a really good mood, aren't you."

"* hey, if all goes according to plan, we get to use that bike together. and catch ourselves some bad guys."

At once, he had her attention. And her excitement. "* Really?" She was smiling so widely now, her irregular teeth were looking out. The doctor shifted the stuff she was carrying a bit, so she could stretch out her hand. He took it and took her down to the part of the true lab she could get to. Into the room where she had set up an entire rig and a portal, both of which were connected to the human internet and Sans' conspicuous tricycles. When they arrived, the lizard recognized something on the table, dropped all the stuff she brought on the floor and quickly went to fetch and show this to Sans. "* This! I made that back when your bike was new." It was a little contraption he couldn't quite make out at first. "* It's an earpiece. I don't need to speak over the loudspeakers. If this is still here..." She went over to push up a panel and open a cupboard. It was another set of special clothes for Sans. Yet again modeled one-to-one after his regular outdoor clothes. "* If you go out there, try them on. And tell me!" She was getting so excited over this, but he reminded her of why they were here. "* Oh, right. Just a minute." As if she could speed herself up as well, she went on to very quickly undoing the cables and finding the right one with an adapter that was extremely tiny on one side, which fit onto the tracking device from upstairs. He knew ahead of time that she'd ask for that, and brought one of the bikes in as well. "* Ah, perfect." Sans just stood back and watched as Alphys linked everything up, booted up the computer and started making configurations. "* So, what do you want the tracking device to do exactly?"

"* told ya, track someone. best if you're here next Tuesday - and Thursday. you follow their movements and gimme directions."

"* Don't you think displaying it on a radar would be more reliable?"

"* you got a radar you can fit on this bike?"

Without a word, Alphys went to another wall, pulled open a drawer and placed something that looked like one on the table. "* I've got a syncable navigation system, ready for montage." She really was prepared for something like this. Along with a few other identical ones. She even had one to match each bike's colour.

"* sweet!"

She blushed and went back to the computer. "* Thanks. I was looking forward to when we finally get this going." When she was done preparing her approach to what Sans originally suggested, what he saw was satellite images of the surrounding area, including Shoneon Village. Beyond an empty hill next to the cliff, a little light was blinking. "* That's where we are right now. Only that it doesn't mean much since we're underground." She disconnected the tracking device, and left with it. She was gone for quite a while until she came back, sweaty and out of breath. "* Phew, okay it's at the other side of the lab. Now to see if it worked." Back at the computer, she started to zoom in closer and closer to the little light, until you could differentiate two different ones. A yellow one and a green one, still very close to each other. "* Yes! It looks like it's working."

"* lemme give this a try." At the exact opposite end of the dark lab, he found the device lying on a table. Using the stuff he could do, he went to a very different location, and called Alphys on her cell phone. "* so where am i now?"

"* Okay, that went fast...the library at the Enkate U campus."

"* alright...now?"

"* The shopping mall downtown."

"* right...and now?"

"* Right next to me." She hung up and turned around to face him. "* It's working. Everything's working, once I add these to the bike."

Alphys' job for the time being, was to get the rest of the hardware working. As for Sans, he took his time to sleep on Monday, before he left for Mettaton's theatre. The employees at the front let him in without any problems, but when he went upstairs, he got stopped by security. Scott, a Monster resembling a purple pterodactyl, forcibly stopped him to ask where he was headed. When he was asked what his business was, he told them Alphys had sent them. "* Sir?" Scott pointed the wireless head set installed at his wrist to his head. "* There's a skeleton that wants to talk to you. He says the doctor sent him."

Sans took this opportunity to speak into the microphone as well. "* i hear ya got a missing humans problem?" He heard a faint hissing from the earpiece that could only be Mettaton trying to shush him from the other side. Scott proceeded to hold the earpiece more closely to his ear, nodded a few times, and then begrudgingly undid several locks on a door further down a corridor upstairs. With them out of the way, Sans walked across a soft carpet floor into an office in bright pink and white. The walls, wherever possible, were covered in plush, cotton or some cloth. Little red and pink teddy bears lied across the back ends of the tables, but a lot of the stuff that already overloaded this room, had long been swiped to the floor by a large block of metal that was grasping the upper ends of his body while wheeling in a circle. "* OH MY, OH MY GOODNESS, HOW DID SHE FIND OUT? MAYBE I SHOULD HAVE...OH, IF IT ISN'T EVERYBODY'S FRIEND FROM SNOWDIN! WELCOME, TAKE A SEAT." Sans grabbed a little black stool from the corner. One of the few things here not covered in pink plush, and sat down. The robot quickly rolled up to him and pretended to pull on his cheeks. "* TELL ME, HOW DID SHE KNOW ABOUT THE MISSING HUMANS? IF SHE COULD FIND OUT..."

Oh right, Mettaton hadn't told her yet. There was no way Sans could know at this point. Well, he was going to have to worm his way out of this one. He swiped down the hands. "* she just knows things...i guess."

The screen visibly adjusted itself upwards and then downwards, so as to mimic someone taking a deep breath. "* I GUESS THAT WILL HAVE TO MAKE DO FOR NOW. PLEASE, TELL ME YOU CAN HELP ME!"

Sans wove his hand to make Mettaton calm down. "* already on it. it's why i'm here. i wanna volunteer as a security guard. stand outside your club at some key times."

"* YES! YES! ALL THAT YOU NEED TO PUT A STOP TO THIS. I'VE ALREADY BEEN TO THE POLICE LAST WEEK, THEY WON'T HELP ME. MAYBE TAKING THIS TO THE DOCTOR WAS BETTER ANYWAY. OH GOODNESS, OH GOODNESS, I HOPE THIS STOPS SOON." He had long gone back to rolling circles around his desk in the middle of the office. "* NOW, SKELETON! WHAT IS YOUR PLAN?"

"* for now, i'm sitting back. i got it all figured out. even got a plan b."

"* I SUPPOSE...IF THE DOCTOR TRUSTS YOU, I'LL PUT MY FAITH IN YOU, TOO. BUT PLEASE, MAKE IT STOP! I DON'T WANT THIS TO BLOW UP. DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT SUCH A HOMICIDAL IMAGE DOES TO ONE'S TICKET SALES?" He started to grab Sans by both shoulders and shake him. "* DO YOU? DO YOU? DO YOU?" Sans agreed to stay for long enough that Mettaton calmed down about this. Eventually, he had himself back under control and simply decided to turn on his human form and overplay everything dramatically to hide how much this bothered him in front of others.

Sans had a whole other day to get ready, and for Alphys to complete everything. It was only Tuesday evening when the next human - the one Mettaton was going to come for his help on in two days time. And Sans had everything ready. He knew where the human would stand, when he would come out, where he would turn and set off to go. It seemed pretty easy looking back. If only all those humans weren't so quick to call things conspiracy theories, someone else probably could solve this, too. But they just did, and Sans had no choice but to be the one that took on this case. Sheesh, in a world without Monsters or time travelers, humanity would be pretty screwed. On the next midday, when he visited Alphys, a blue bike was ready and fully operational with the round display attached and working as well. And a high-speed field test made it clear that it withstood whatever speed he would put it through. Packed with two books and a burger, he headed to Mettaton's theatre to wait until the dimming of the main light and the flashing of show lights announced the beginning of a several hour show. This was his queue. With the tracking device in his pocket, he went outside, to the side of the building the pizza parlour was at and leaned against the wall, so he had clear vision of the Theatre's entrance. The next thing for him to do, was just to wait. To wait out the entire show, until it was done. He kept reading and regularly checking the time.

When there was only quarter of an hour left, he put the book aside to be sure to catch the guy. Then the bulk of the audience left. At the beginning they were clustered up and started spreading. Gradually, the density of the crowd came closer and closer to the small open area he had seen on the footage before Frisk had reset things back here. And there he was. Sans quickly got on his feet and started walking straight 'past' the guy. The guy had already seen and decided to walk to the pizza place, but had barely made any steps. A little more than half-way Sans met him, spurting towards and running right into him. "* oof, woah, sorry. barely saw you there." The human had tripped over and needed a second to support himself and get back up. In that one moment he had turned his back on Sans, the skeleton sped up to sneak the tracking device into the guy's otherwise empty back pocket.

"* It's okay, it's my fault. Sorry."

After both had apologized, they went their ways. Once he was sure the guy wasn't looking, Sans sped around the corner to watch him. He went right up to the girl, just as planned. Talked to her, took one of the fliers on her stand, was gestured to go inside, obliged and disappeared. A quick zap to his bike later, he put on the earpiece and talked to Alphys. "* it all went smoothly. got any movements yet?"

"* Not really. He's just sitting in that restaurant." Probably a good opportunity to get a good starting place. Based on how you could enter a garage just by walking through, he could guess that right opposite to the pizza place, the road started. And it did, so he waited on the roof just above the massive garage door. "* Wait...something's happening."

"* sorta guessed it would."

"* He's moving. Wait, is that still part of the restaurant? If he goes any further back, he's going to..."

"* come out at the other side, i know." One last check to make sure the navigation system was working. He could see the dot moving towards him as well.

"* Okay, he stopped."

"* probably they're preparing him to leave. or keeping him stored."

"* Who are 'they' anyway?"

"* that's what we're here to find out." Several minutes passed at a time. "* you getting any movements?"

"* No. Not any major ones at least." He waited a whole ten minutes. He was about to change their plans in case they had found the device and gotten rid of it, when he heard the wide garage doors open. "* What is happening?"

"* they're moving out."

"* Oh god...I can't take this." She was going crazy on the other side, while Sans rolled off the edge and zapped himself on the road, quite a bit behind a large van. It had no windows that allowed you to see the back. Except for the driver's and co-driver's seats, it was completely covered up. It took some sharp turns, to head right out of the city. Following it on the boardwalk and simply shortcutting past passers-by was actually safer than being on the road. And it wasn't that fast either way. He could move along with a safe distance. Only when it took a turn into the roadways, was he forced to follow more closely and on the road. That was also when they started to move faster. "* What is happening? Where are they going?" A few more stretches later, they came bay what the guys in that van probably expected to be his cut-off. A crossing with the street lights turning red as they approached it. They just sped past it and kept going. Sans didn't even stop. While still following it, he first shortcutted into the sky, then forwards into the sky but with himself up-side-down for a moment to lose momentum, then back to the ground the right-side-up, but on the grass next to the roadway further ahead, and after that, back on the road, just behind the van.

For a few minutes, it slowed down a bit, until Sans spotted someone peeking out of the window to the co-driver's side and seeing him. Then they moved faster again. The sky was a lot clearer than on Wednesday, but the evening was still dawning. While he was waiting for them when all the streets were illuminated in a bright orange, the sun was already setting and only a reddish veil hung over everything that was still in the sunlight. He hoped that wherever they were going, the dark wasn't going to get in the way. Only two slip paths later did Sans notice that they had almost taken an entire U-turn and weren't heading back to the city, but somewhere completely different from where they were first headed. They were changing their course because of him. There was no doubt that they were aware of him, and considered a slipper-wearing, child-sized skeleton in a tricycle a genuine threat. After a few more kilometres, they took a way out into a more narrow street, the above of which was thoroughly covered in the long branches of little forests to both sides. All the more weird, considering they were on roadways surrounded by green fields and woods in the middle of nowhere, between towns and villages. They came by, of all the things, a little police outpost, that seemed to stop every car that came through. They didn't search them, just ask for some ID. And there was no way they'd let a tricycle back onto the road. His hands were tied for the time being. He simply stayed at the side, waited for them to roll past that control, before he shortcutted back into the air, past the outpost and back onto the ground. This was definitely some sort of favor they were pulling. There was no way they could keep human 'cargo' and just drive right up to willingly engage the cops if there was any reason to worry about being asked questions or having their 'cargo' inspected. Their sudden acceleration spoke volumes of how surprised they were to see that even this hadn't shaken Sans. He was still after them.

When before, they had taken several slip roads to the right, now they were turning back left with every exit. But by now, something changed. He had already gotten used to the occasional car driver getting confused over seeing him and sounding their horns, but ever since they noticed him getting past that police control, it became more and more frequent. At first, only one expensive looking car started catching up, moving past him and driving a stable course between him and the van. Then another one came, and another one. Until three rows of cars on three different tracks were blocking his way to the van he was chasing. All right. it seemed this took a bit of an advanced trick. Sans waited until they were gonna be on a straight stretch for some time, then slowed down to gain some distance. Once he had enough distance he caught up again, but not in order to catch up, but to move forward faster than the others. When he had just the right momentum, he shortcutted back up, and right onto the top of the van itself, jumping off the bike and lifting the bike from the distance to get it safely on the van's roof. Unfortunately, they did something similar by slowing down and then speeding back up. He jumped back on his bike just in time to just roll back wards, look behind himself and safely place himself on top of one of the cars that were supposed to block his way. They were forced to slow down and gain some distance. When he thought that was the end for the moment, he heard a warning shot. Someone in one of the cars behind him was firing a gun at him.

Quickly, he zapped himself back to the side of the road. Granted, he couldn't just chase it here. Not if they were shooting at him from behind like that. Not from that close at least. Didn't mean he had to stop though. He continued to follow it. On the grass. He simply pedaled so fast, he could keep up in spite of the low traction. Once the van's entire backup was gone, he hopped back onto the road. By this point, it had long turned dark, and he had to keep quite a better lookout not to run into anyone. But this time, they didn't pull any major things to try and shake him. Something occurred to him. "* alphys. did you notice them changing course?"

"* Way ahead of you." He heard wild typing and folding of paper. "* They're back to wherever they were going from the start! They're reaching one road they were in before, right now." The rest of the chase was no longer a chase.

They didn't seem to make much of an effort to get rid of him any more. He was either not worth the bother, or they had given up on that and were going for something else. After one more exit, the road ended in some secluded industrial complex with several decayed, dirty and visibly long-unused storage facilities and factory halls towering high above. Once it was on the property, it took a very sharp turn and slammed it's back doors open. Sans took this as his cue to jump off his bike and follow them, but the moment they had dropped their cargo, with him still heading for the tied-up guy on the ground, they sped away again. "* Why?" He heard a familiar voice echo from the unlit and empty storage hall. "* Why must you be so stubborn." The sound of many hooves on solid ground came closer and closer, and the guy he was trailing was still twisting around, trying to get the ties or the gag off. Eventually, before all the others, with his staff, his beard and his furs, Elder Theiresias stepped out of the shadow of the building they were hiding in. His big horse face looked more enraged than when Papyrus beat that pawn of his. "* First you take our pride, now you seek our merchandise too?" A whole army of Centaurs was marching up from the inside of the storage halls all corners of this compound.

One stepped forward and pointed at Sans. "* Is this the one that bested Spearman Alessio?"

The elder shook the head. "* No, but he is related. If word can be trusted, he is his brother."

As they closed in from all sides, Sans smiled, held up his hands and slowly backed off. "* you guys really got a knack for givin' us trouble. all right , ya got me, anyone care to tell me what's goin' on here? what're you planning on doin' with this guy?"

"* This one?" Not in the mood for humour, yet laughing mischievously, the elder pointed at the twisting human and went on. "* Normally, we would take them and sell them to your masters." Their masters? "* Proper performance art requires proper specimens." Performance art. "* But we will lose our source of income if Miss Rosenberg finds out we were exposed. Which is why with - 'this guy' - as you call him, we don't have anything planned. We will not do anything to him." A bit faster than with him, they swarmed the human on the ground, their hooves eager to trample on him. "* No, instead you - one of those 'Monsters' from the Underground will have gone mad, chased down an innocent, well-meaning young and aspiring activist, and slaughtered him in a mindless fit of rage! If need be, this will happen again and again, until it is clear to humanity that Monsters must either retreat back to where they came from, or face another war." Upon saying that, the Centaurs around the human, widely cut-off from Sans, did what he didn't think they'd just do right here right now. With no hesitation, they buried the rustic ends of their spears in the guy's body, pulled them out and stabbed him again and again, to make sure he was definitely dead.

And like clockwork, the green light from his body announced that his soul was responding to the bodies of Monsters eager to take it. "* Luckily, us Centaurs were here in time and came in possession of the power we needed to stop you and avenge his de...wait, what?" With a single hand sweep upwards, Sans had used his gravitational realignment and had the soul itself turn blue and fall backwards. Upwards, into the sky. Where none of them could get their hands on it.

"* woops."

Just like with Alessio, the Elder's grin vanished as he became angry at things not playing out the way he wanted. "* More Circus tricks? Fitting. But even a victory, a clown remains a clown, and a clown is what you are, as well."

Sans shrugged. "* meh, i've been called worse. but wait - just for the record, you are an elder, right?"

"* Of course I am!"

"* aand all that stuff you just said meant i'm gonna die, right?"

"* Yes!" Then this was the exact thing the Doc was talking about.

"* okay." The elder was the only one that was angry. They still had him surrounded and more than outnumbered. "* all you guys think these are my last words, right?" They all nodded. "* so let me get this straight." He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, their light was blackened out. "* First you plan on murdering my brother. Just so send a message. He stopped you, and spared your guy anyway. Even if you hadn't lied to him, he would have. Now you're killing innocent humans, and sacrificing this one, just to try and goad humans into another war with Monsters. Killing everyone that is dear to me and many, many more. Am I correct in this? What is your verdict?"

The elder had calmed down and was back to smiling in anticipation of seeing Sans killed before his eyes. The hand opened itself smoothly and stretched itself to the side, as the elder bowed forward with his humanoid upper body. "* Guilty as charged."

Sans waited until he was back to his regular stance. "* Thank you, Elder Theiresias. That is all I needed to hear."

"* Attack!", the Centaur shrieked and attack they did. Some raised their spears, others readied arcane missiles. Sans simply let the light in his eyes work it's magic and moved fast enough to dodge. Every. Single. Attack. It must have been several dozen at a time, all trying simultaneously to strike him with whatever he could. And he dashed out of harm's way, dozens of times a second. The ground around them had more and more breaks and defects and more and more of it was charred from the burn of their magic attacks. Only after half a minute of non-stop dodging did they start retreating. "* What is happening?"When they retreated, they made way for Sans and the elder to see each other. "* Is he blocking your attacks like the other?"

"* No, it's more like we can't strike him. I think he is only an illusion." With a burst of Sans' magic, an enormous bone shot out from the ground right below the Centaur that said that and launched him high up into the air and on course to fall back down, far away from this place.

"* come again?" For the most part, he remained completely motionless, save for the spinning runes in his eyes, and his right hand moving up to subtly wave them to come at him again. "* wanna give it another try? let's play this like papy did. i give you another free go. but after that, it's my turn."

Suddenly breathing very heavily under the pressure and the looming fear that musta been creeping up him, the trembling Elder stretched out his hand, pointed at Sans and screamed: "* Do not underestimate him! Strike with no relent!" Now, even the ones further away were readying missiles of their own. With another move of his hand, the Judge of Monsters had himself drift upwards, then sideways and onto the wall of one of the buildings. In perfect sync with his hand adjusting the direction of how gravity affected him, he started speeding around the outside of the storage hall, dodging all the magic missiles that came his way. After a few spirals around the entire thing, most of it's roof and upper walls were heavily damaged and had huge holes. From there, he swiped his hand down to grab hold of the soul he still had high up in the sky, to pull it in his direction and sped onto the ground , through the crowd of Monsters out to kill him, and dragged a lot of those missiles that were chasing him after himself, into their casters' fellows. Once an entire salve of arcane missiles had struck a breach into the hurt and flinching Centaurs' ranks and they stopped firing, he came to a stop at the edge of this compound.

"* sheesh, you guys thought this would be soo easy. the big one was so hard, sure the smaller one wouldn't be a problem. all the less if all of you at once tried. ya know what. ima give you a chance. but this one's gonna be a wee bit harder." He undid the change on the human soul's gravity and pulled it straight towards him, but too much time had passed. It would take a bit longer until it got to him. Most of the Centaurs had stopped, but one of them gathered his courage to launch one more magic attack at him. The last that he saw though, was the still brightly shining blue light in both of Sans' eyes as he dodged the projectile, followed by a bone, as large as this entire outer area was wide, swung all the way from behind him, into the sky and down onto the hordes of Centaurs with a smash strong enough to strike a breach into the solid ground and send tremors that could be felt even from way off this property. Any battle cries had made way for mutters and the sounds of Centaurs being genuinely terrified. But long before the Centaurs that were already backing off could get anywhere near being out of sight, that human soul passed the last bit of stretch it took to get to Sans, right into his body. He felt it's sheer raw power surge through his body. It was unlike any power he ever had. No G-Nerator could top that. The power was so overwhelming, it was hard to focus. And this voice in his head crying out over and over, asking what is happening, wasn't helping. "* ima spare anyone who sees me." Now visibly scared, all the Centaurs moved backwards a lot faster. Alphys tried asking what was happening, but Sans had trouble focusing as it was. "* you wanna live? keep your eyes open." He tried to get it under control by channeling this power through the power converter. He turned all the power of a human soul he could get any hold on, into speed. Within a matter of nanoseconds, he spotted Centaurs that blinked, readied and invoked entire waves of bones and Gaster Blasters and killed each blinking Centaur one by one. From their point of view, it was probably impossible to see the attacks, it just looked like their fellow spearmen were - at random, collapsing into dust.

This went on for god knows how long, until he felt himself losing too much control, lost patience and just buried their entire army in a giant pile of bones, big enough to fill the entire storage buildings that the Centaurs were retreating into. What control he had, he used to dispel them, speed around all the corners to check for survivors, and once he was absolutely sure there were none, speed back home and into the safety of the lower lab as fast as he could. Regardless of how far out in the middle of nowhere he was, within a matter of ten seconds, he was back with Alphys. That was how fast he was with the power of a human soul. Held up his hand and invoked a spell he was taught only for emergencies. This kind of emergency. Being-stupid-enough-to-absorb-a-human-soul-kind of emergencies. His shambling body was hurting all over as soon as he touched his chest with the black fog that surrounded first his hand, then his entire body. Everything about him recoiled, the voice in his head died down, and following an endless stream of pain flooding his entire spine, he found himself supporting himself on his arms and regurgitating disgusting vomit and a green-glowing human soul.

"* Oh god, oh god. Oh goodness." He didn't bother to look, but he could figure that the doctor was leaving to fetch a soul container from further down the hallways, brought it to him, and carefully guided the soul into the container before sealing it. While Sans was catching his breath, the nervous lizard went to fetch towels and a bucket of water. "* I'm so sorry, I didn't know you had done that...and that you can do that...that black smoke... what was that?"

He took one deep breath to clear his thoughts. "* believe me, telling you would make no sense whatsoever." He took quite some time to recover. But before Alphys was done cleaning this whole mess up and he could go on to recap anything with Alphys, he remembered that there was one more thing to do. He used his abilities to get back to that place he had faced the centaurs at, and searched the dead guy's pockets for the tracking device. He was lucky enough that it was still there, and vanished with his bike before anyone came near this place. "* phew..." Once that was done, it was finally time to sit down and talk to Alphys. "* so, now, performance art. what did that guy mean by this?"

Alphys looked very unsure in the chair she had pulled up to sit next to him. "* I sort of read what he probably meant, but all I've got is circumstantial evidence and conjecture, nothing specific." She spun around and shuffled closer to the desk to open a browser. "* Rosenberg does ring a bell though." When she was done, she had the website of some humanitarian charity opened up. Fine designs in soft colours lent the background an air of comfort, and on top of it, it listed in black letters article upon article about all the ventures, projects and collaborative efforts it made.

Once he was sure he had pulled himself together, he shuffled closer to take a look at this himself. "* so, what makes us so sure this is the same rosenberg name that centaur was talkin' about?"

Alphys pouted and put up her hands in defeat. "* I don't. It's just the first thing that came to mind."

"* so that's also just circumstantial evidence and conjecture."

The helpless lizard shrunk together. "* Yes..."

"* great, so we're back to square one. at least us monsters they'll hopefully leave alone after this. now that they know we're not screwing around." He was relieved to later find out that he was right. That pizza place down the road had spontaneously closed down and everyone there had vanished without a trace. Mettaton didn't get upset over the result of this, but why, was for another day. For this night, Sans was only left with one more thing to do.

* * *

The little skeleton took a deep breath of the fresh air from the pitch black skies above Enkate City. He had sought out the empty roof of the highest skyscraper he could find and was slowly walking toward the edge. A concerned lizard's voice echoed through the earpiece he was still wearing. "* Are you sure about this, Sans? You don't sound like you want to do this."

"* i've gotta. it's only really today that showed me, what a dark place the world still is. that's not even it." One step at a time, he mounted the edge of the roof, felt the winds of Enkate's skyline brush against him and spread out his arms. "* i've been to the surface before, remember? it was a bad place then. but now, it's even worse."

"* Sans, if you don't want to do this you don't need to. Maybe I can find a solution. Or Undyne? Or Asgore? Or Frisk. Maybe you just need some patience."

He closed his yes and took another deep breath. "* patience won't solve anything. patience is putting stuff off. i'm done putting this off." With one more impulse, he tilted forward and let himself drop down.

And facing straight to the distant ground, placed one foot in front of the other, to gather up speed running down the entire length of the skyscraper. Left, right, forwards, with all the speed his own power could muster, he rushed through every road, every street, every corner. Running along every square metre he could find and cover, surprising muggers, thieves, murderers, drug traders, even burglars hot-footed, leaving them bruised beyond recognition and lying at the feet of law enforcers with countless civilian witnesses. He caught one guy in the act of taking advantage of a woman in a dirty street, and simply carried both of them straight into the set of a news channel and placed them in front of the running camera. He spent as far as he could, the entire night sifting through the haystack that was Enkate City to find every criminal he could find, no matter how stingy it got.

He paid great attention to deal with every criminal he found in a way that didn't leave any room to ignore them. Too many witnesses, too many eyes all over it. This entire city, probably every city, was rotten to the core, and every pillar that the citizens leaned on was in fact just another tendril of the monstrosity that consumed it. The police didn't solve crimes, they covered them up. The press didn't dig up any big scoops, it just acted as a megaphone to shout down anyone that did. Humanitarian charities didn't better the lives of humans, they made humans disappear. For all he knew, pizza places didn't even serve pizza to humans, but instead served humans on pizza. You couldn't trust anyone to do their job. If you wanted eyes on inconvenient truths, you needed to make them watch by force.

If you wait for a hero or a leader to emerge, they will never come. You are on your own. Don't put doing your part off. Don't wait for the hero. Be the hero. That was what the lesson Sans was putting off for so long. And what he was coming to terms with. This was a chore. It took lots of effort. But it had to be done. If he didn't do it, nobody was going to. Solving the cases that mattered was always going to be like spotting an oil carpet on a body of water, and doing so was going to prove impossible, unless he drained the water first.


	42. The Forsaken Shrine

.

A Knight's Coolest Dish

Chapter 09

The Forsaken Shrine

* * *

"Never underestimate the strength of the connection between linked Boss Monsters. That is a mistake everyone who deals with them makes at some point. Keeping it in mind, has to inform every judgement on their thoughts that you make, if you want to understand them. Oftentimes you will run into a situation where one Boss Monster is overly bothered. Even though there seems to be nothing that is bothering them. That is when the connection comes in. What is bothering them, isn't anything regarding them, but simply an echo of the worries of the Boss Monster they're connected with. No matter how far away they are. If one of them seems troubled, but you can't find the trouble, you will probably find it with the other one. Many thoughts and desires of one are actually those of the other. If one Boss Monster wishes they could do one thing, it is actually the other one wishing that they did. It's a natural mechanism that is meant to drive them towards solving any problems that either of them face, together. Regardless of any arbitrary circumstances."

* * *

One step in front of the other, soaked in the ceaseless rain, but not the least bit bothered, a figure marched through the dark of the night. Most who saw her, probably didn't mind. They confused her for someone else. What difference would humans see, after all? The inner part of the village that all these Monsters lived in now, was visibly different from the surrounding parts that were added. Inhabited by humans and with roads running between each and every block, save for an occasional playground or park. She wandered around quite a bit, trying to reorient herself in these vastly changed surroundings. But when looking to distant hills and other distant sites, she eventually got a grasp of where exactly she was, and where to head. And once she had that, she soon found it. What so many had told her about, eager to see her come back up here. Where once - long ago - stood her house, stood something else. Something still large enough for her to fit through the door frame, and with windows of a size to match it. But it was not her home. Above the entrance hung her name, as if to mock her, and every thing she had lost. Everything they all had lost. Just like how everything around it was replaced with pavement and housing for those humans, her own house was replaced. To her disgust, they named it 'Miarim Inn'.

She stood in the yard between the walls around more pavement that held human vehicles and stared at the sign with her name. She had stared at it for quite a while, when a human in a red suit came hurrying out with two umbrellas, one of which he was using to shelter himself from the pattering tides. "* Good gracious, Ma'am! You must be freezing!" He offered her the umbrella, but she didn't move. She didn't move the least bit. She stared at the thing, and then stared back at the man. "* Please, do come in!" He was about to get awfully close to her back with that hand of his, when Miarim inched her hand around for her palm to point at him, and under shudders, the now terrified and hyperventilating human backed off as his hand froze so quickly in the rain, that little picks formed around the lower side. Yes, her fur, her robe, her horns, everything was drenched and freezing cold. But that didn't mean she had to let a human get so close.

When the scared man was desperately trying to warm up his hand and asked her several times what she did or why she did it, she listened, but left him to tantalize for a bit. When she determined that it was enough, she turned around to him. "* You know my brother may forgive you, maybe all these Monsters do. But don't think I did as well." This was all that she said, before she made straight back for the Underground and back to her home and family. It had gotten colder, but it wasn't cold enough, yet.

Only quite a bit later, the young page from Miarim Inn started connecting the dots. This was Asgore's sister. The sister he told him about, when they first came up here. The very same sister that this entire hotel - long ago - was built to await and welcome. And she rejected it.

* * *

After a sheer endless night of short-notice crime-fighting, Sans finally woke up way into Wednesday afternoon. Even after unlocking the door to his room, he was still groggily stumbling outside and along the railings down the stairs. In the kitchen, another splash of water to the face was what he needed to wake up properly before he could head out to Alphys' place. She was in the same place she always was at this time of the day. At home, in front of the computer. On the side screens, various videos were open of people talking into microphones at different locations that Sans recognized from last night. "* morning."

Much more prepared and less nervous, Alphys turned around to greet him. "* Good afternoon. You're already famous. Well, infamous."

One more time, he rubbed his eye-socket and stepped closer. "* whaddya mean? what happened?" She was getting used to his visit.

"* Okay, for the Centaurs, the story is that the guy that died randomly traveled all the way to where you met them, met and shot all those Centaurs and then himself."

He had to squeeze his eyes shut for a moment to process this. "* what?"

"* I'll probably best just show you." The much more comfortable lizard leaned back, maximized one window with a recorded news segment and hit the play button.

The camera panned along the road he followed that van to the dusty compound. "* It is a travesty for all local communities.", the overlaying voice started.

This was followed by an interview of a crying female Centaur holding a baby in front of the same property. "* How could anyone do such a thing?"

It cut straight to a feed overlooking the entire abandoned factory compound, now laced with police band and law enforcers navigating over and between piles of dust, spears and strewn pieces of cloth, leather and metal clothing. The overlaid woman's voice from before, continued. "* It all started like a harmless evening for some tribesmen only seeking safe shelter. When suddenly, things took a dramatic turn for the bad."

It came to a stop, facing the spear-wound-ridden guy lying on the ground. With no gun or any indication of there being a gun involved. A police officer walked over him and pointed in some directions while recapping his version of the story. "* He must have come in here over there, pulled out his gun, shot them all one by one, and then shot himself, right here." Only that by that logic, he had shot himself dozens of times without dying and all the 'bullet wounds' looked a lot like they were inflicted by spears. And there wasn't a gun. Or bullets. Especially over a hundred rounds - assuming he got one Centaur with one shot. So realistically, he woulda needed somewhere between three hundred and five hundred rounds. And the time to reload them. And the magazines woulda been strewn around had he fired that many, not to mention any at all. Sans had serious trouble figuring how any human would believe this.

The next shots showed Mayor Jaclyn Wimble getting onto her podium. The moment she was in the picture, Alphys jerked together. She was positively terrified of this woman. "* Recent tragic events have shown that we still don't enforce gun legislation rigorously enough. Especially on humans. Today, I have authorized the police to enter and raid human residencies wherever or however they see fit, to guarantee the safety of our valued minority communities."

The woman speaking over all the footage resumed talking, while the screen next displayed various crowds of people dressed a lot like that girl behind the stand and the guy who's life Sans effectively saved. They were holding up signs reading things such as 'End Human Terror'. "* Demonstrators have taken to the streets to show their solidarity with the families that lost their loved ones." Sans could only watch this with something between vindictiveness and silent anger. They cared about the families now. All the humans that disappeared before Sans met Theiresias, and all the humans that were to disappear afterwards, they never batted an eye to those. Those were just an inconvenient detail. A 'necessary evil' a means to an end to fight...there this word was again.

A reporter was interviewing a red-dyed and very loud woman at the front of one of the crowds. "* Attacks like this one are a sign that there is still too much of a human advantage in this country!", the self-righteous human who was probably only not murdered right then and there because of that same 'human advantage', screeched. "* Human men have had it too easy and now, it is time for Centaurs and Orcs and Monsters to have their turn!" He cringed at being held up as a justification for any of what these guys did.

"* ya know what? enough of this. is there any news on last night?"

Alphys chuckled "* Hehe, Is there? A-apparently you're a pro-human ethnic supremacist now."

He didn't know what to say to that. "* say what?"

The grinning lizard just suppressed her unending giggling and brought up another recorded news segment to play. The beginning was just a montage of cameras scrolling across empty roads. "* It has left a flourishing city in question of it's future. Within a single night, citizens were displaced and put into the arms of abusive law enforcers in the hundreds." What? "* What at first relieved some homeowners of burglars, revealed itself to be a highly racially biased phenomenon. Minorities all over the city were targeted, displaced and further abused, all of which accompanied with a blurred dash of bright blue." The picture transitioned to some woman in her fifties standing in front of various blue-white logos. "* Valerie Rosenberg from the Rosenberg foundation has issued a statement on behalf of the Elfish community, condemning the attack and describing the victims' traumatic experience as reminiscent of the Blitzkrieg back in nineteen-thirty-nine. Since then, discussion online has had the term 'Blue Blitz' emerge to refer to this occurrence."

When it was enough to give Sans an idea of how the press received his first night as 'The Blue Blitz', she stopped the footage. "* the blue blitz. gotta admit i like the name. but all that other stuff...i didn't pay attention to what they looked like, i just hunted bad guys. and all i did was bring them to cops."

Alphys, not surprised, confused or shocked in the slightest, put her hands closed her eyes, inhaled and exhaled. "* I know it was dark, but all those muggers and killers you stopped. If you had to guess their skin colour, would you file them more under white-yellow or under brown-black?"

He stopped and tried to really think. He didn't really bother with any of that. He just stopped crimes wherever he found them. But sifting through what he recollected from each one took him a while. The memory was still blurred from the exhaustion. "* i...i guess they were the more like the latter."

An annoyed snort escaped the doctor. "* Don't worry, I know you didn't mean to target anyone. It's not you, it's those Orcs. They can't tell muggers and the like from people that abide the law. All they're seeing you doing is getting Orcs arrested. Which gets me to the bad news."

She opened up a third news recording. It was a compilation of hordes of Orcs gathering in different locations. The signs they were holding up featured charming slogans such as 'DieCopsDie', 'KillHumie' and of course the name-giving slogan 'ProtectOrcBodies'. What followed was another interview with one of those Orcs holding up a sign. He was speaking in a heavy accent, much more heavy than Sans had heard from other Orcs. "* Dis Blue Blitz thing is threatening Orc bodies, but we ain't backin' down never. I will not take dat. We be crashin' dis city if we have to! Deez displacements are hate crimes and dats what dey are!" Hate crimes, huh? Busting burglars and murderers was a hate crime now.

She stopped the footage and turned around, with a very worried face. "* They're demonstrating against you and looting stores." How was looting stores gonna stop him from setting them up for arrest? "* I'm not so sure about this whole superhero thing anymore. Maybe we shouldn't do this."

"* yes."

"* yes we shouldn't?"

"* no, we should." Old Sans mighta taken that as his cue to bow out. Sit-back Sans. But the day before, seeing how much of an effort was made to stop him from trailing that one van, seeing how deep this stuff had gone. He was take-action Sans now. He had to be. "* this stuff." He drew a line around the screen with his finger. "* that's a sign of how bad things are. they take gettin' away with crime so much for granted, someone gettin' in the way for once, looks like an attack on them as a person. alphys." He started smiling. "* you still in?" He stretched out his open hand, and it took Alphys quite some time to gather the courage to stretch out her own claw. A handshake and an assuring smile later, they were both looking forward to spending another night committing hate crimes.

* * *

Ever since they first settled down up here, as the weeks and months passed, Asgore visited the school building as a gardener. The lawn and prepared patches of earth for flowers and shrubs would have withered away if left only for Toriel to tend to them. After she started holding her classes, it soon became apparent that the children left too much rubbish lying around on the floor. The halls were filthy enough, you could see the filth from outside. Without being asked, when she wasn't looking, he would clean up the halls and then the classrooms. This could only go on for a few weeks, before she caught him after all. He only noticed her watching for a moment, before she walked away pretending not to have seen anything. She avoided him, wherever he was. Whether or not he was wandering the hallways to keep them clean. She refused to talk to him beyond necessity, but she didn't stand in his way either. And although the silence between them weighed on him, the reliability of their schedule gave him some peace, because it made him feel that things were all right. Every weekday at half past six, she would enter and open it up to prepare the imminent school day. Every Friday afternoon, she would wander along the exits with a relaxed expression and an even breath, close up and lock all the doors.

Until one day, a little over two weeks after the commotion around Papyrus and his public battle with a Centaur, that something was really wrong. It seemed to be creeping up in the last few days already, but only towards Thursday did he really feel it. When it was ten past five on Friday afternoon and save for the two of them, everyone had left, he was sitting at the steps just outside the front exit, under a solid outdoor roof supported by two pillars, where you had to step under the often-rainy sky . He was pretty sure something was wrong. There was trouble she wasn't telling him about. Ever since she started running this school, she had always closed up more or less at point four o'clock. He didn't turn around when he finally heard her leave and slam the doors shut, but when he saw her come down the steps in her green flower-pattern dress and her light green robe-length vest, he made her stop with the mere tone of his voice. "* Is there something wrong?"

For a moment, she didn't even turn around. As he knew her, wagering whether she should even talk to him. "* No." She turned around and expected this snippy response to be the end of it.

Asgore didn't raise his voice, but he answered with a bit more strength in it. "* You are lying to me." He knew. She knew he knew. They had been married for hundreds of years. She couldn't keep a secret from him, even if her pride - whether warranted or not - depended on it. She remained silent. "* I can sense that something is bothering you. Is stubbornness really a valid reason to reject help when it comes your way?"

The frown she had put up widened further. "* As if you could help me anyway."

There was cruelty in every word she spoke, but he didn't falter. "* What makes you so sure of that?" For a brief time, it seemed like he was getting through to her. But this vanished within a second's notice. Toriel snorted, opened up her umbrella, turned around and left without a word. Even when they met at Alphys' house, she didn't say a word relating to their previous conversation. Even when they met once more outside, for him to pick up Frisk and the two of them to part ways, each heading to their house, she didn't mention it. Asgore spent the weekend tending to the plants of the village and looking after Frisk, like he always did, but this weekend was different. Even if she refused to tell him what, something was bothering her, and because he knew, it was bothering him as well. When he made dinner for the child, he thought about Toriel's problem. When he took the child to the city to fetch groceries and other things they needed over the week, he thought about Toriel's problem. When he took a walk around Shoneon Village to look after the flowers and other plants, he thought about Toriel's problem. When he sat in front of his new computer and watched the news, he thought about Toriel's problem. He wished for nothing more, than for him to just march up to her house, knock on the door until she opened and to demand her to let him help. But it was her school. Whatever there was, if she didn't wish to involve him he couldn't do much about that.

Perhaps she didn't need his help. Perhaps she was going to sort it out over the weekend. Perhaps it would sort itself out over the weekend.

It didn't sort itself out. When he waited at the entrance, she passed him with trembling hands and couldn't spare the courtesy to look at him. She didn't bother to open any other doors either, but went straight upstairs. Anything that Asgore had in mind, he dropped and wandered into the echoing halls of Toriel's school building. Up the smooth ceramic stairs, past the upper classrooms, to the back end, where the wing of empty teachers' rooms lay. At the centre of it, with several rooms in-between, was her office. She hadn't even locked the way behind her. "* Toriel?" One door after the other, the king knocked, waited for a while, and opened. Even with the last door, behind which he knew she was sitting, she didn't respond, and he opened it anyway. "* Toriel." She didn't greet him, she didn't speak, she didn't shout, she didn't say anything. She only looked up from the screen in front of and stared at him. There was anger and rejection in her eyes, but also fear. "* It didn't resolve itself, did it?"

She continued to keep silent. For longer than Asgore bothered to count. Eventually, she merely stopped staring at him, and rested her head on her hands. Without having heard any open demand for him to leave, the king came in, got another chair and sat down next to her. Even when he was sitting right next to her, she didn't move an inch. She didn't mind him seeing what was there, so he took a closer look. She had her browser opened to an e-mail account. The e-mail she had opened, was from the Rosenberg Foundation. The Foundation through which this school was going to be financed. The e-mail came on the morning of last Wednesday. It declared the termination of their relations with Toriel's school. There was not going to be a grant, and thus any money to make keeping open this school possible without a massive drain on Asgore's all-in-one money reserve. Ever since, there was no more contact. Toriel took away one hand to grab the mouse and switch to the sent e-mails. She had asked for further correspondence to see if she could reason with them and prevent this termination. She had done so immediately. She had waited ever since, even over the weekend. There was no response. Not even now. "* I see." This was it, so he got up. He now knew what was bothering her, there was no need to impose on her any further. Before he vanished behind the Boss-Monster-sized door frame, he turned around once more. "* I know you won't answer. You don't need to. I just want to know, that I will help you in anyway I can. You are not on your own, even if you say that you want to be." With a deep sigh, he set off to head back outside. Open the other doors to let the children in and then went home to wake up Frisk as well.

Little by little, the children entered the building, and Toriel couldn't be bothered to get up, until Asgore went back up to remind her that they were waiting. "* Come on, now. There will be a way to solve this." She didn't answer, but she did get up, which relieved him enough to leave the property and make his rounds through the village. Just waiting for a response from the Rosenberg foundation was Toriel's approach, which didn't work as far as Asgore saw. He cut his rounds short to head home and see what he could do. His first approach was to try and give whatever phone number he could find on them a call. Doing so led him to one person on the other end of the line, who's only job was to refer anyone that called to their issue's respective phone number. The next person was similar. He spent an hour just calling people and either being referred to other numbers or, if they were so merciful, being put through to the next employee. It was astounding how many employees it could afford for such minute tasks. When he finally made it, a short-spoken secretary repeatedly told him that 'there was no order to make contact' and nothing else, until she, after him badgering her quite a bit, eventually did work up the patience to explain to him, that an order to terminate the contract was issued from above, and no order to contact Toriel was made. In other words, there was no misunderstanding, there was no formality, the Foundation, by orders from above, retracted any intent to set up the school's funding through taxpayer money. If he wanted a school to be here, he had to either have it close down completely and wait for the state to re-found it under foreign-ordained management, or find another foundation to set up the channels instead.

He could have just spent hours randomly contacting other, similar foundations one after the other, in hopes that somewhere among them, one was willing to get in touch despite their case's special circumstances. But this gave him an occasion to call an old friend. He dialed his private number, that he kept only for occasions such as this. It was morning where he likely was, Asgore made sure of that. And it didn't ring that often before his call was picked up. "* h0i!"

"* Temmie? Are you still around him?"

"* yaya! tEmmie no go awai nao!"

"* Can I speak to Daniel?"

The Temmie on the other end called to somewhere off to the side. "* Dannieh! Is azgo!"

Within seconds, he could hear Dan Victor's swift yet croaky voice come closer. "* Sorry, folks. I gotta take this one. Asgore!" He laughed. "* Haven't heard from you forever! How's it coming along?"

"* Good, so far. Surprisingly well. How about you?"

"* Pretty good. Those two visits at your place got me a lotta unspinnable publicity. And they're getting really desperate now. It's insane to what depths they'll go. But I got a whole lot of stuff coming up. The next one's a beauty."

Asgore laughed. "* I'm sure it is."

"* So, got anything I can help ya with?"

Straight to the point. Probably the reason he was successful. "* Yes, I do in fact. Toriel is having a bit of trouble. I remember you saying you know what to do." He described in great detail what he knew.

"* Wow, okay. That's a pretty serious issue. Just funding an own school outta your own pocket is working a miracle. Can't recommend it. I tried that once. Worst mistake - worst mistake. Believe me. But I got another idea. Just go to the LoveDontHate Foundation. You're still gonna be almost all Monsters there, right?"

"* Do you mean the school or the village?"

"* The school of course."

"* Yes."

"* Good, then it'll work. So if the Rosenbergs aren't helpin' ya, go to the LoveDontHate foundation. All written together, no apostrophe. They're mostly runnin' on Koppen&Birken money, they're not gonna deny you any help."

"* Incredible! I will give this a try right away, you have my thanks! If I can repay you, do not hesitate to call back."

"* Will do, and good luck with that issue of yours. Hope you work it out."

Once they said their goodbyes, he followed his word and immediately tried calling his way through the phonelines of the LoveDontHate Foundation. And the person on the end of these phone lines was much more patient, asked for Toriel's contact information and told him they would get in touch with her. By the time he was done, it was getting evening, and Toriel had already closed the school, so he noted down all the information on this new foundation to try, put it in a closed envelope and brought it to Toriel's. He rang the bell and once he heard her come to the door, he audibly slid the envelope into her letterbox and left. From the distance, he saw her fetch it and went home. All he could do for the time being was wait and hope. The child didn't say anything, but he felt like he could tell that something wasn't quite right. Nonetheless on the next morning, Asgore was there to witness Toriel open up the school on the next morning. Relaxed, relieved and on schedule. For all he could tell, everything had sorted itself out. For now at least.

* * *

It was raining buckets, the kind of weather that would have any child stay inside with him. His favourite weather. When he arrived at the LoveDontHate Foundation's social school for children in need, all the little Orc children from the southern wilds were already on their seats, so all he needed to do was place the bag on the table and take off his soaked jacket. "* Good Morning, children."

"* Good Morning, Mister Eppstein." They all sat neatly on their chairs, as instructed, with signs in front of them to show the social worker their names.

The teacher started picking out his chalk to note key words on the class room's black board. "* Welcome to your first lesson in our social education program for foreign children. I'll get right to it. Today, we'll be talking about dreams and perspectives. For a start." He started pointing at random children. "* There, in the back. Amal. What do you want to be when you're grown up?"

"* An inventor."

He nodded. "* Mhm, okay, an inventor. Aisha, what about you?"

"* A fashion designer."

"* Oh, it seems we have someone who reads. That's a change. And Ahmed? What about you?"

"* I want to be a bigwig."

"* Ah, so you mean a businessman or a broker - or an economist, okay." Once all three children's names and their dreams were on the board, he turned around, and held his chalk in position to strike through one of them at a time and went on in a melodious tone. "* All right, here we go. I've got to say, other classes I get don't aim this high. Nevertheless, here we go. Amal, what you call 'inventor', adults call 'research and development', and you will never work there. That's an idea someone like you can scratch from the get-go." With one swipe, he struck through the word 'inventor'. "* Aisha, no fashion studio is going to hire you. No point in applying or even studying for that." He struck through 'fashion designer'. "* And as I mentioned, Ahmed, they're called businessmen, and you will never be one." And there went the third dream. "* You lot all have much too high aspirations. Not a single one of you will ever amount to something. It's picking up rubbish, cleaning toilets or being unemployed. You'll just have to get used to that." He gave them a few moments to process what he had said. You had to be a bit patient with Orc children after all. When they started getting grumbly, the Elf determined that they had understood. "* Now don't worry, it's not your own fault. Because this is where we get to the 'Human Advantage'. You see, most people in this country are humans. For instance, if you were to apply for a job at a fashion studio, most of the people there will be humans. Your employer will be human. He - or in that case more likely - she, will have lots of applicants, a lot of which are human. You think she is going to hire you over a human, Aisha?"

"* What if I'm better..."

"* Why would she care? You're an Orc. It doesn't matter how much they praise the heavens out of you, all humans hate all Orcs, that is just a fact of life. Don't trust them when they say they don't. They're just lying. They may deny it, they may not even know it, but deep down, they do. Even if you are the best person for the job, they won't hire you. Because they don't want you to make money."

"* That's not fair!", some child in the corner added.

"* Well they don't care. They don't and they never will. Whenever you're not looking, humans are always rubbing their hands together and plotting against you. And when you're listening, they're lying to your face. Say you had this kind of situation: You applied, you didn't get the job, and you're asking why. They'll just say you weren't good enough and pretend like they wanted you succeed. There is no nice way of breaking through this glass ceiling that humans set up for you. Or to summarize. None of you have any perspective in life. The only problem that's causing that are humans, and the only solution is violence..." For a second, he was shocked to hear the bell ring at a time like this. It was probably best if random outsiders didn't hear him teach this to children. Without further ado, he left the classroom, went for the door and opened it. "* And who do we have here?" Before him stood a large and wide bipedal creature. She was covered in snow-white fur, had two floppy ears, fang-flaps on her mouth and two very, very short horns. "* Ah, you must be Miss..." He pulled up a small noteblock from his pocket. "* Toriel...Dreemurr?"

The creature twitched but then smiled back at him. "* Just Toriel."

"* All right. Call me Geoffrey, then. Just give me a second, I already have all the paperwork right here." With a quick rush back and forth between the door and his bag on the front table, he brought her the agreement she needed to sign to set her school up to be covered through his employers' channels. "* Take your time to fill it in. Take it home if you like, there is no reason to have any worries."

She was downright radiating once she went over the papers and - most likely - recognized parts of them. "* Thank you so much for doing this on such short notice."

He wouldn't have any of this. "* Please, no worries. The more variety we bring to this country, the better. Putting an all-Monster school in peril like that was a most irresponsible move on the Rosenbergs' part. I couldn't bear to just watch if I wanted to." Once she had herself assured that she wasn't leaving anything important here, the creature thanked him once more and then left him alone with the children again.

* * *

When he saw that Toriel had calmed down on Monday, he could finally relax and focus on other things. For a brief time, she had him really worried, when it was announced that there as going to be a spontaneous free day. But, somehow, something deep down within him wasn't as unsettled as it was before. When he waited at the steps to see her enter though, she was on time as if nothing had happened. So he set off to spend the day he always did. When he was back at the steps though, witnessing her close the doors, she didn't just walk past him down the stairs like she always did. When she was about to pass by, she paused, and then came closer to sit right next to him. For a while, they watched the rain fall together, without either saying a word. At some point, out of the blue, a brief 'Thank You.' was to be heard from her. She rested there for a few more moments, before she got up, opened up her umbrella and left for home like she always did.


	43. Vicious Spiral

.

A Knight's Coolest Dish

Chapter 10

Vicious Spiral

* * *

Seeing Papyrus in such a sound physical and confident mental state, was both surprising and uplifting. Seeing him outperforming so many with such ease at the Barracks that entire week , and then seeing him kick serious Centaur butt without getting hit once. When even on the following day, his performance in all disciplines that mattered that day, didn't drop, she thought it was finally time. There was one question that wasn't going to stop bugging her any time soon. She kept it to herself, for fear of having that particular weekend repeat itself, but now he was ready to take on anything. She thought about dropping it, when they were on their way home, but that didn't feel right. "HERE WE ARE." He announced, once the car was halted at her place.

"* You're going to cook for tonight now, right?"

"ALWAYS A PLEASURE TO SEE YOU LOOK FORWARD TO IT.", the happy skeleton answered.

"* You know what? Let's hang out at your place. There's something I wanted to talk about."

"UNDERSTOOD. TO THE SKELETON HOUSE!", he chanted like a superhero from ancient TV shows.

And so they went to his place. It was empty. It had become a thing that Sans was god-knows-where, whenever she visited. A good opportunity to take their time for this. "* Wait, before you get started! We still have some time to sit and talk, right?" She went over to sit on one side of the sofa and without further ado, Papyrus followed to sit on the other.

"OF COURSE. WHAT IS ON YOUR MIND?"

"* You sure seem to have a really good time lately."

"THERE IS NO CHALLENGE SOMEONE LIKE MYSELF CAN'T OVERCOME."

She laughed. "* You know I've been wondering. You were in a pretty bad place in the beginning. You know, when you had your first pasta-making classes." She could already see the smile vanishing. But she had to know. "* It was a bit unlike you. The Papyrus I know would never let what some chef told him get to him like that." He had stopped looking back at her and instead snuck his gaze towards the floor. "* Something's changed. Something that had never..."

"YES." He didn't let her finish, but knew what she was getting at. "SOMETHING'S CHANGED."

"* And? What was it?"

Calm and collected, he continued. "The flower." Oh god, not this again. "The flower's gone."

Undyne caught herself almost saying something, but she was more confused than annoyed. "*What do you mean 'It's gone.'?"

"GONE. IT DOESN'T APPEAR ANYMORE. THE FLOWER TOLD ME TO GET ALL OF US TO THE CASTLE, THE HUMAN FREED US, AND THEN THE FLOWER WAS GONE. I THINK IT WENT TO..." Her now pretty gloomy friend stopped mid-sentence.

"*To what?"

The sinister, expressionless look on his face vanished without a trace and he smiled at her as if there was no reason not to. "NEVERMIND. COME ON! LET'S SEE IF WE CAN MAKE US SOME HAND-MADE GOBLIN FOOD DEL PAPIRO!" He picked up a book and opened it somewhere in the middle to point it's contents at her. It depicted flat bread covered in salad, some vegetables, some spices and meat.

"*Goblin food?"

"LIKE NAGA FOOD, BUT DRIER AND HOTTER!" Woah. Even hotter?

"*Please don't over-spice it so much again."

"NEVER FRET. I LEARN AND IMPROVE!" She spent the afternoon hanging out with him and keeping a close eye on what he did, and paid especially close attention whenever his hand was getting a bit too close to the chili. The result didn't turn out remotely as hot as she was afraid it would. He didn't bring up the flower any more though. Even though for once she didn't want him to, he had dropped the entire issue. Then again, she didn't mind. He seemed happy enough without the flower. But deep down, this never let her go. She didn't mind it much at the time, but on that evening, when they first set foot up here, when Papyrus claimed the flower stopped appearing, she could have sworn she recalled actually seeing a golden flower with a face, just before the barrier was lifted. Then again, she didn't remember how exactly it was removed anyway. Was the flower real the whole time? Her memory of that entire day was somehow blurred. As if that conversation had never happened though, they had a good time on their own, and that didn't change when they joined up with everyone else.

This was all there was regarding Papyrus for the time being. She had a problem of her own to deal with. When she and Alphys had tried getting involved with all this stuff her activist-police-cadet friend Miranda obsessed about, she later told Miranda that it just wasn't her thing. She understood, but Undyne still had a girlfriend, which made her some kind of higher being for her to follow around and praise non-stop. Wherever she could, she would be sticking to Undyne like a tick. When they sat in a theoretical class, she was sitting next to her. When they practised shooting, she was always right behind her. She was always the sparring partner the melee teacher insisted Undyne took.

And it wouldn't have been remotely as annoying if she wasn't so very damn awful at everything they did. When they were at the range or outside shooting, she barely even hit roughly around the target's chest, let alone hit home with some good shots. In martial arts, she never actually improved or even saw any reason to improve. Being good at defending yourself was a 'male quality' and thus evil after all. When they went through arrest-related situations, she was either careless or didn't pay attention to the regulations those courses were held to teach. At least when they went out for a run, Miranda's stamina was so low, she couldn't keep up with Undyne if she wanted to. Or anyone else for that matter. But even here, Undyne started to notice a worrying trend. There were still worlds between them, but she was getting worse. Ever so slightly, she was falling further behind when running long stretches, her aim was getting worse, she started making mistakes when simulating arrests that she didn't make before, and at the risk of it being an excuse, she blamed Miranda for it. She was focusing so much on this imposing woman, she was comparing herself to trash and as a result, approximating herself to trash. But Miranda was like a flower, you just couldn't stomp on it and bluntly tell her to buzz off.

Eventually, she caught an opportunity to do something, when Miranda didn't show up for a day and she passed by Steve Brock, the friendly instructor who introduced her and Papyrus to all this in the first place. "*Hey!" He was about to vanish in his office, when she caught him. "*Do you have a minute?"

"*Of course." He invited the increasingly insecure Tiderider inside and closed the door behind the two of them. "*Please, have a seat. You look troubled."

She sighed and leaved with both elbows on the table. This was bothering her more than it should have. "*I want to talk about Miranda Briggs."

He smiled and nodded. "*Ah, you two seem to be getting along pretty well."

"*Yeah, sort of. You know...where do I start? It's..." She stopped and tried to come up with a nice way to put it. She failed. "*She's been here for longer than me and Papyrus, she's here for real and yet..." It had to be said. "*She just isn't very good. At least at anything we do here. I don't think she's really suited for law enforcement and I can't believe you wouldn't know. Why are you doing this? Why are you keeping her around?"

Steve sighed. Judging from his reactions, he didn't so much not know about Miranda under-performing, as he was surprised of all this coming out of Undyne's mouth. "*Look." Something was weighing down on him. "*I don't know what you're expecting us to do about that. Evict her? Fail her attendance?"

"* That'd at least be a start, right?"

The instructor's eyes narrowed. Those were rhetorical questions, and Undyne gave a very wrong answer. "* We can't do that, she'll just sue for discrimination." Was this guy serious?

The perplexed fish ran her hands along her face and then tried following this line. "* But you're not doing that if she really isn't fit for the job!"

It didn't faze him in the least though. He just shrugged. "* You may see it that way. A judge won't. She'd just put on a show, maybe some tears and a heartbreaking story, and he'd rule in her favour. Even on the off chance that under normal circumstances, he wouldn't, there are these things called 'court interventions' for this exact kind of case. Even if things went in our favour, more resources would be deployed to shame any judge into ruling against us. You're asking me to play a game I can't win."

"* There's got to be something you can do."

Left with no way around breaking something to Undyne that he knew she didn't want to hear, Steve raised his head, closed his eyes and took a deep breath before he leaned forward and started. "* Here's what you need to understand. We can't and won't do anything about Miranda. She is going to sit out her time here, doing however good she sees fit to. You got an idea here, you finish up your studies, attend some classes here, in the end, you come here and get your diploma. We don't expect either of you two to break any records. Don't worry. It's all right, get your citizenship and all of that, and you'll hold office, fully paid and supplied like any regular officer."

There was something very unsettling, but she wasn't quite sure what it was. An uneasiness held a grip on her back, but she took too long to grasp exactly what he was telling her, or why. You two? Why specifically her and Miranda? She was already out in the hall way, with the door closed for him to get some work done, that she started processing it. Realizing why it was that specifically she and Miranda weren't expected to perform so well, yet she was promised the full package as if she had. The two of them couldn't be more different. There really was one common denominator. It was because they were women.

Talking to him didn't help at all. Her drop in performance was still there, she just ceased to care. Was this really it? Was this all she could aspire to? Wait out some pieces of paper and a badge that she was going to get whether she did well or not, just for being a woman, and then getting the full payment of a law enforcer as a free handout, for her soulless future self to sit there and collect, while others did all the heavy lifting for her? The more she thought about this, the worse she got, even physically. Within a week, she found herself not running so far ahead from Miranda, and this uneasiness was clamping down on her in the morning when she headed to the Barracks, during all the classes and when she went back home. Even when she did her usual training routine that she had done for years without fail, she noticed she wasn't really as pumped to get it done the way she always was. She was - as a whole - in decline. Soulless husks like this that were just handed everything and eventually took this for granted, was this what human women were perfectly happy being?

Her growing silence didn't go unnoticed. Alphys kept asking what was wrong, but it wasn't like that was something she could do something about. She'd just explain to Undyne the political and financial minutia of why this was happening, and Undyne would as always, be bored and stop listening after a few sentences. One Friday evening, Frisk approached her and asked her whether something was bothering her. Poor guy, like a little kid could understand. "* It's complicated." She tried answering. "* It's basically...a lot of humans up here take a lot of stuff for granted. And I'm going to have to cope with that." She tried smiling any worries out of his mind. "* Don't worry, I'll get over that." She didn't get over that.

Papyrus also asked what was wrong. As if he was going to understand. She barely understood why any of this was happening herself. When, during their ride to the Barracks, it became clear that she wasn't going to give him an answer, he brought something she didn't expect. "YOU KNOW, ABOUT THE FLOWER. I THINK I KNOW WHERE HE IS." What? "HE SOMETIMES TOLD ME HE WOULDN'T BE THERE FOREVER. HE USED TO SAY HE MIGHT THINK HE HAD ENOUGH 'LIFE' AND WOULD JUST GO AND STOP APPEARING." He rarely looked concerned anyone other than Undyne lately, but this time, he did. "EVERY TIME HE TALKED ABOUT HAVING ENOUGH OF LIFE, HE ALSO EXPLAINED WHERE I COULD FIND HIM, IF HE EVER DISAPPEARED."

"* And where would that be?"

* * *

"* If I ever 'stop appearing', there is one very particular hiding place I'll be at and I'm going to describe to you in detail, where that is and how to find it, so I'll need you to listen very closely and memorize every word I say." And so I explained for the first of several times in that timeline, where to find me, when it was time to turn off. To just reduce myself to moving and thinking as little as possible. As if I had died after all, but without the world loading back to my save point. "* At the end of the ruins of Home, behind the big stone door in Snowdin, there is one room with a round hole far above. That's a hole in a mountain called Ebott, where humans can fall or jump inside. Sometimes, daylight shines in from there, that hole leads to the surface. Don't think you can leave the Underground though. It's useless because the barrier is keeping you here anyway. There is only one room connected to that one. Looking from the room that leads to the surface, in the right corner behind several alcoves hidden deep in the dark is a little patch of earth. If anything really bad happens, even if I disappear, that is where I'll be. But I need you to promise that you only go there, if it's a real emergency and a lot of Monsters are in danger. But if an emergency happens, come. For all that matters, even if everyone died, come to me anyway. Trust me, I can always make things right."

* * *

"HE MADE ME PROMISE NOT TO GO TO HIM UNLESS I HAVE TO. WE GOT THROUGH EVERYTHING UNTIL NOW, AND I WANT TO KEEP IT. IF THERE IS ANYTHING THAT IS REALLY, REALLY BAD, YOU CAN TELL ME." So at least she had an idea where this flower was, at least assuming it existed. With this, Papyrus took the opportunity that a red street light gave him to stare at Undyne. "IS THERE ANYTHING REALLY REALLY BAD?" He could sense it too. "TERRIFYING?" He could sense what was going on with her. "WORLD-ENDING?" She wove it away and had the two of them silently head to the Barracks to get the day done. Generally life was becoming less and less doing what she did to the best of her ability and with clear intent to improve and instead, a game of waiting out the worse parts of each day, so she could wait out the less unbearable parts of each day. Another reason why she didn't bother involving Papyrus, was that on top of her physical condition getting worse and worse, so was Papyrus' cooking each week. Week after week after week the same soul-sucking routine, followed by awkward Friday evenings of lying both about how everything was fine and about how Papyrus was definitely getting better, even though he had gone back to freezing everything he made at some point. It was like her ceasing to try being a good cadet came hand in hand with him trying to be a good cook, even though he insisted every time that he was doing his very best.

Before long, she found herself running side by side with Miranda each day. Not like catching up with everyone else mattered, she stopped and asked her to stop as well. "* Wait, wait. We're so far behind all these guys. Are you never bothered by this?" All she got for an answer, was a questioning look, a dismissive grin and a few shakes of her head. As far as Miranda was concerned, everything was fine. When she looked up certain things online when she didn't know what else to spend her time with, she saw countless other women holding well-paying jobs, and expressing a similar attitude to Miranda's. This was just it. This was normal. This was just what her life was going to be. All this talk of being 'strong' or 'strong women' was just to feel good about themselves, none of them really meant it. Over time, as the days grew shorter and the weather colder, so did Undyne. In order to stop her from asking over and over what was going on, she needed to push away Alphys further and further. Even their Friday evening gatherings she only attended long enough to put herself through whatever Papyrus created and called food.

Every day was torture and every night, she spent near tears. This life of mediocrity was not a life she wanted. There was nothing redeeming to be had. Coming up here was a mistake. Eventually, there was one Friday where even just the thought of facing everyone was tantalizing as it was, but actually being there, she always itched to do or say something, really bad. She couldn't quite figure out what she was itching to do. She was sick of this, she was sick of the Barracks, she was sick of all the others, she was sick of Papyrus, she was even sick of Alphys. When she then saw Papyrus lift the cover and reveal some weird-looking iteration of that cold fish stuff from the far-east that Alphys used to try making for her, the Captain was too disgusted to sit this out. "* You know what?" She faced Alphys. "* No." That was all she said. Without a word, she got up, fetched her jacket and up and left. She ignored all of their voices asking what had gotten into her and just stepped out into a cold, rainy autumn night. She couldn't stand to see their faces any more.

Everything about all this appalled her so much, and she couldn't talk to anyone about this, but being around them meant they would want to talk about whatever was on her mind. They could all tell after all. All that there was, was to wander onwards. She didn't have any destination in mind, she just followed the roadway. Once far out in the fields, with no car nearby no Monsters and certainly no friends, when she was alone in the dark and an endless stream of water was already covering her body at all times, she finally felt the long-needed tears creep out from beneath her eyes. She didn't know why they came. She only knew that now, they did. Not like anyone could see them now. Asgore, Toriel, Sans, Frisk, Papyrus, Alphys, they were all back at her home, worried about her, and she was running away. She was so sorry. But she couldn't just come back now, could she? How could she tell them anyway? What would she tell them? That all their hopes were delusions? That nothing really mattered and none of them were going to have what they were working to get? Was she going to tell Asgore or Frisk that the Dreemurrs were never going to get over themselves and get back together? Was she going to tell Papyrus to his face, that his cooking - everything he had worked for, for years, was for nothing? Was she going to tell Alphys, that they were just going to fade away in irrelevance and never put a stop to central banking or solve whatever else she was on about?

In a neighbouring village, on a bus stop she came by, a night bus passed, which she boarded just for the sake of it. It was a lot warmer sitting in here watching the roads and landscapes pass, but she didn't feel a bit better. She didn't even know where to go. Home? Before she knew, she saw one of those twenty-four-hour-open fast-food restaurants from overseas and got out. The bright colours the walls and menus were shining in were in stark contrast to what she was in the mood for. She ordered herself a drink and a burger to stare on and not eat all night, sat in a corner upstairs, and whether she wanted to or not, fell asleep. Or unconscious. She didn't dream anything after all. All she knew was that from moment to the next, someone was waking her up by tipping more and more strongly at her arm. "* Yeah, I'm up. What?"

A slightly exhausted looking young man with a used tray in one hand was standing next to her. "* Excuse me. You might want to..." He pointed at her untouched and still wrapped burger. "* Do you want me to heat it up again?" She waved him away shook her head to wake up properly. It was already morning. The sun was shining through an all-covering wall of white clouds, but the rain had stopped. Undyne looked out of the window onto the still wet and now much more thoroughly driven-on street. What was she doing? She was such a massive jerk to everyone that mattered to her for no reason. She had to get back. Quickly, she put on her jacket, finished up what was left of her drink and left the rest where it was. She was at some road, far away from any place that allowed her to get home. And lost. And without her cell phone. She asked her way to the next train station. It turned out she was in a completely different town, halfway on the other side of the city, in an industrial district, where most people went to work with their cars. All she could do for now, was no matter how long it took, march closer and closer to the next train station, asking for the way again and again whenever she didn't know where to continue. She was pretty sure she walked a little circle until she found it. When she sat there, listening to the voice in the loudspeaker announce each station, this strangling uneasiness she always had was still there, but it was different. It was more like a shadow hanging over her. It was guilt.

She had kept any of her worries away from the others, now she was awful to them because of them. While changing trains and waiting to be brought closer and closer to home, she told herself over and over, that she would apologize to everyone. It wasn't their fault. The first thing she intended to do, was to visit Papyrus and to set things right. From the beginning, he made these dishes specifically for her to try, and he trusted her judgment. And for long enough now, she had lied to him. When back in the village, she spent the way from the station to the skeletons' house going through what she was going to tell him, word by word, variant for variant, depending on how they'd react to her showing up. She had to hope they'd let her in, she would tell Papyrus how sorry she was for busting out on him, she would ask him to remake his sample, she would make herself eat it, and this time, she would tell him, honestly, what she thought of it.

If she was honest with herself, she seriously considered it a possibility that Sans got the door and refused to let her in. It was past noon already by the time she arrived. "* HELLO?" When she was about to knock, she could already hear Papyrus' voice. And she could hear him march straight to the door. He opened it before her hand had reached it in the first place. "UNDYNE! THERE YOU ARE!" He was expecting her? He was wearing an apron over his armour, made space for her to enter and closed the door right behind her. "EVERYONE IS WORRIED. AND ALPHYS IS - WELL - STRANGE. MORE STRANGE THAN OTHERWISE."

"* I am so sorry Papyrus, I really..."

She was interrupted. An open kitchen mitt signaled her to stop and follow. "I'M THE ONE THAT SHOULD BE SORRY. YOU WERE GONE FOR SO LONG, WE ATE MY SPECIALTY WITHOUT YOU." That was fair. "THEY ALL LIKED IT SO MUCH, I THOUGHT IT UNJUSTIFIABLE FOR YOU TO MISS OUT, SO I MADE YOU ANOTHER PLATE THIS MORNING!" This skeleton, not the least bit angry, jaded or hurt, pulled a chair closer for Undyne to sit at the table, went to the fridge to pull out a covered plate of what he had made and put it on the table in front of her. It was sushi. Several basic pieces of it, arranged around a few that were - somewhat - larger and different from what she had seen. She didn't trust cold food, but Alphys had made some of that once, and it was kinda alright. Carefully, she examined each piece, especially the bigger, strange and a bit overloaded-looking ones. It was a wide roll of rice, drenched in a strange red on one side, in the brown of soy sauce on the other. To it's inside were two layers of quarter-rings, in each layer one quarter ring was of cheese, two of avocado and other vegetables, and one of fish slice pieces and at the centre, a white-red piece of crab meat. Throughout it, thin strands of seaweed were wrapped around two layers each to keep it from falling apart. "IT IS NAMED AFTER WHAT THE PEOPLE THERE ALWAYS CALL ME. AITSU NO PAPYRUS!" She was content to do this. Absolutely content. She owed it to him. Undyne breathed in and out and swallowed down any second thoughts, before she took the confident skeleton handed to her, and carefully tried to heave up this monstrosity. "GO ON."

Nothing like ripping off a band-aid. She closed her eyes, opened wide and tried. And then, something within her changed. Something very, very drastic. The way the flavours of each three adjacent parts of this piece played together, the freshness of it all, especially the fish! It was...it was...

The moment she was done, she sprang up, grabbed her startled friend by both shoulderpieces and started shaking him while screaming. "* Papyrus! Did you make this? Be honest with me! Did you or did you not make this with your own hands?"

He didn't move. He only looked around out of lack of understanding. "Y-YES?"

She only shook him harder. "* Make it again! Now!"

"OKAY, OKAY!" Unquestioningly, he got to work. Pulled out all the ingredients. She pulled the chair away from the table and to the kitchen, to silently watch him at every minute step, from when he - extremely slowly and barehanded, wove the layers of strands of ingredients into an inner roll, then prepared the rice to roll that around it. Dipped both sides of the outside in soy sauce and some hand-made mash-water. It took ages. She didn't bother to check the time.

She made sure she saw everything he did. But in the end, he rolled the almost finished batch in strewn sesame and an unusual vinegar, placed it on a new plate and cut it into pieces. On each piece individually, he cut the strands of seaweed to stabilize them, and with that, he was done. Exact copies of what he had served her before. Without bothering with chopsticks, she grabbed one, and greedily devoured it. The same slew of tastes, the impossible was possible. This wasn't just not-awful. This was amazing! And he had made it right before her eyes. All that she had lost, all her spirits, all her strength. She felt it all return. A power the thought lost, now surged through her once more. "* Papyrus!"

"WHAT?" He was getting pretty disturbed by her behaviour, but her behaviour was appropriate.

With force, she grabbed him by what his chestplate had for a collar. "* You did it! You're a good cook! Everything you made was shit! But this is a masterpiece!"

"THANK YOU? YOU'RE STARTING TO SCARE ME."

She simply roared straight at him. "* I don't care! You're coming with me now!" With the door slammed open, she swung and jumped into her seat on his car. "* Let's go!" With their safety belts on, she commanded him to drive. "* Let's go! Off to Mt. Ebott!"

"WHAT? WHY?" He was unsure, but he obliged without hesitation, whether on his own accord, or out of fear.

Undyne slammed one hand against the outside of the car to hold on. She could barely hold her excitement. "* You made something good Papyrus! Don't you see?"

"ALL I'M SEEING IS THE ROAD."

"* That means there is hope! We don't need to get used to our lives. We don't need to accept our fate! You can be a good cook! I can be more than just a handout-collector and Alphys can stop central banking!"

"CENTRAL WHAT?"

She shook her head. It was unimportant. "* Some nerd stuff, I don't know! Either way, life is - faster!" He wasn't hitting the gas hard enough to match her mood. "* Life is worth living!" With his googley-eyes peeking out, he headed into the roadway and approached the not so distant mountain.

"* WHEN WAS IT NOT AND WHY ARE WE GOING TO MT. EBOTT!"

With gravitas in her voice, she whispered barely enough for him to understand. "* To fetch an old friend of yours."

"OLD MAN DICKSON?"

Way to spoil the moment. "* No, the flower!"

"THE FLOWER IS JUST FOR EMERGENCIES!"

"* Papyrus, this whole surface is one big emergency! You haven't seen anything near how awful it is. Stop here!"

Under her command, Papyrus pulled over at a little shed at the foot of the mountain. There was no road up there. The only way to get to that hole Frisk once told about was to climb. Unless you had magic harpoons. Undyne undid Papyrus' safety belt, jumped out of the car, grabbed him and launched him up on the shed, before climbing up herself. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"

She put on a grin that he absolutely didn't like. "* Something I've been aching to do for a long time." She lifted her right arm, and with her newfound strength, summoned up a spectral harpoon, nothing like her own spears, much more like what she had previously seen that other Tiderider Krushe invoke and an ever-extending spectral rope attached to it. With a physical force inconceivable for any human, she threw it hard enough for it to dig into the rock of the mountain and grabbed the rope. She then ran her left arm around Papyrus, lifted him up and with a powerful leap, jumped to the side opposite from the mountain to use the rope to pull herself into a wide swing around the mountain. With the endlessly shrieking, googley-eyed skeleton in her arm, she repeated this twice until she was in a position from which she could see the big opening he mentioned. With one more swing, she came to the mossy cavern and without letting Papyrus go, dug one more harpoon into the wall and let herself down the hole onto a golden flowerbed. "* There we go." When she dropped Papyrus, he kept shrieking non-stop for another half minute, until he finally calmed down.

"NEVER. DO. THIS. AGAIN."

"* You got through it alive. Now to find that flower! Let's go!"

Easy enough. The room they were in matched both what Papyrus described, and what Frisk described. Now to find those alcoves in the next one. "* Left or right?"

"RIGHT."

"* Flower? I know you're there." She regularly turned to Papyrus for assurance that she was getting his directions right. There were indeed several rather thin pieces of rock obstructing smaller areas behind them in one particular corner. "* It's time to come out! Nggh!" In spite of her renewed hope energizing her, it took a lot of her strength to move those pieces of collapsed wall aside. "* Cell phone." She didn't have hers on her, so Papyrus needed to give her his. It's light revealed indeed a single, large golden flower with the top that bore it's buds hanging down. Only that it didn't remain hanging down forever. And the grim look coming from a face between it's petals revealed it to be the way the skeleton had described it. "* So you were real."

Slowly, I raised my head and after an eternity, opened my eyes to look straight at my unexpected visitor. "* I can't help you.", were the only words I intended for her to hear.

"* Oh no, you don't just bail out on us now!" Without taking any time to take in the fact that I was real the whole time, she knelt down right in front of me and dug her fingers into the earth.

"* What are you...hey!" Through sheer force of her hands, she was digging me out of this patch of earth, roots and everything, and removed a lot of it, until it was all reduced to a handy patch of earth to carry around. "* Put me down, I'm useless to you. Having me means nothing!"

She didn't care about what I really meant. No power I had was of any meaning to her. "* No it doesn't." Papyrus tried to cheer me up with a smile while Undyne went on. "* Without you, Papyrus loses his confidence, without Papyrus' confidence, none of us have any. We need you and we're getting you, whether you like it or not!" Pouting and not sure what to say, I stayed silent and watched as they, full of either pride or anticipation, carried me all the way by foot. Through the ruins, through Toriel's house, through the wide-open door to Snowdin, past Waterfall, to the lifts in Hotland, over the now barely tread-on bridge in New Home, past Asgore's house until they finally put me down, just outside the Underground. "* Papyrus, talk some sense into her."

Now much more confident, he shook his head. "IT IS NOT THE SAME WITHOUT YOU." With a strange feeling I couldn't describe or explain, I stared at the two of them. They had come all the way here, just to get me. They knew my power was gone. I had told them that I can't help them. It seemed more like they didn't really know what that power was, and they didn't care. They fetched me, just to have me up here. Just because Papyrus missed me. Only then, did I turn around and see the entire beauty of Shoneon Village. They had taken the opportunity given to them, and indeed made their best efforts to settle up here. Not to take the homes of humans or do anything short-sighted like that.

Something within me stirred. "* All right." Without looking back up at him, I went on. "* Papyrus..."

"YES?"

"* You got me, I'm coming and staying up here. But I'm sorry."

"ABOUT WHAT?"

"* Before anything else, there is another person that knew about me. Someone who would really want to know that I'm fine and up here. From what they sounded like, it would be very important for them to know."

When I turned back to him, he was winking at me with a thumbs-up. "NO WORRIES! I LIVE IN THE HOUSE THAT LOOKS LIKE MY HOUSE! I'M LOOKING FORWARD TO HAVING YOU OVER."

Slowly, I smiled. "* Yes, I will come over." Something around my face was trembling. Even until now, I can't explain, what. "* Thank you.", I whispered, before sliding my roots out of Undyne's patch of earth and disappearing into the rock of the cliff.

* * *

When Mom would bury her nose in recipes for pastries and pies, she would often not come out of the kitchen for hours. The only times she was outside of the kitchen, was to sit in her comfy chair in the living room, to wait for whatever she was baking to finish. The perfect time for Frisk to sit down and spend some time with his pick-up line book. His bedroom looked almost exactly the way the children's bedrooms always were in Asgore's and Toriel's houses. Almost nothing had changed. Sure, the walls were now clean, very smooth and white. There was a window in the room and the layout of where the door was in regards to the shape of the room was different. But the same shelf, the same cupboard, an identical carpet, even the nightstand and the lamps were the same. Old habits died hard. When he was sitting in his bed, reveling in the cool fabric of his soft bed reminiscing about how funny a reaction this or that line caused in this or that timeline that never happened, the least thing he expected, was to hear my voice speak from the windowsill. "* So this is where all this flirting comes from."

Immediately he turned around and gasped with excitement. "* Flowey!" Unprepared and confused, he sped over to the window to wrap his arms around the flowerpot I had sprouted out from, effectively hugging both me and a lifeless tulip. If I wasn't soulless, I would have been moved by how quickly his mood swung completely. "* You're back!" He was at a loss for a few moments. It was expected, but I was still surprised at how quickly his eyes swelled up with tears, when he lifted me up and almost got the bed dirty with earth dropping from the underside of the pot. "* I can't...I missed you! I missed you so much! I went down there to look for you, but you were gone."

However I could without hurting him, I grew and extended a thorned vine to softly pat the sobbing child on the back. "* Now, now. Let's not cry about something that isn't sad."

When he let go, he had a radiant smile on his face that wouldn't vanish even slightly. "* There is so much to show you. So many people! So many things!" I was sure there was. Soulless or not. If me seeing all these things made him happy, then for all that mattered, it made me happy too. "* But...but how?"

I could barely face him. I had witnessed him cry out and beg for me to show myself, for ages, not long after they had reached the surface. I had simply stayed still and in place, listened and waited for him to leave. I wanted the ties to be severed, for anyone that knew me to move on. So all I could answer was: "* I suppose more people came to miss me than I thought."

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* * *

Next Time

"* Mrs. Wimble...why are you doing this?"

"This unshakable feeling that someone, somewhere, somehow, despises you with every fibre of their being. That feeling is me."

"* I am in tune with my husband, Toriel!"

"* Alphys? Alphys!"

"* Every time you try saving the lizard, it will happen again."

"* It takes an acquired taste to appreciate true performance art."

The next story's title: 'The Captain Takes Charge'


	44. Under New Management

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The Captain Takes Charge

Chapter 01

Under New Management

* * *

Sighing with relief, she leaned back in her brand new comfy chair, straightened out the newspaper to give an interesting-looking article a better read, and stopped to listen. The screams from her basement, however faint they were, had finally subsided. Now she could read the newspaper in peace. She had to give him one thing though. This man had some seriously durable vocal chords, to still have this in him, considering how long he'd been in there. The article was interesting indeed. In an officially abandoned industrial compound, a large amount of Centaurs, one of which a known elder, had been murdered in bulk. Although as interesting as it would be, Jaclyn didn't believe this story about a Centaur enthusiast spontaneously chasing down and single-handedly killing over a hundred Centaurs, before stabbing himself dozens of times with one of the spears and then placing the spear out of his reach before dying. She could figure who could dodge a hundred attacks and take out so many unsuspecting enemies at once though. It seemed as though an old, boney friend had stumbled upon one of Valerie's suppliers.

Today was probably the day she should start looking into a few things. Placing the newspaper aside, walking out from the spacey dining hall, through the foyer, covered in carpets from the middle east and furniture of fine mahogany, the mayor of Enkate City headed to the smaller entrance hall to put on her bright-pink low-cut shoes and leave. In her fortune of a newest-standard hybrid car, she drove down from the hill her little chateau was situated on and straight into the city, to the town hall. She did walk up the freshly cleaned and almost slippery stairs, but only to run the most pressing of errands, until she instructed her new secretary Wiley to put off everything else that was coming her way for the day. Once that was done, she quickly headed back out to drive out into the densely-woven web of roadways just outside the city, all the way past Mt. Ebott, to reach, at it's foot, a place she was planning on visiting for a month now. Aberdeen Orphanage. She parked her car in the barely paved parking area next to the orphanage's own graveyard that was now easily the size of a village's regular graveyard.

She carefully stepped along the length of the tall, run-down outside walls. The paint was splintering off the wood of all the outside pillars and the veranda that lined both sides of the front doors was so decrepit, it looked more like the entire property had long been abandoned. She couldn't bear to look inside through the sealed windows that couldn't be opened from either side. She could already figure what she would see if she looked inside, if she saw any children at all. The image was already in her head. Two or three Orc children, gathered around a human child, usually a boy, one or two holding them down on the ground, standing on them if need be, while another one struck out and punched or stomped on them relentlessly, until they could neither breathe nor think. All this while Mrs.. Foster, the person that owned and ran the orphanage, and ironically referred to herself as a 'caretaker', with a neutral expression on her wrinkly face and her greying, curly hair bound together, sat on her uncomfortable dark-red comfort chair and watched. Idle. Complicit. Approving. One foot in front of the other, with tender steps, Jaclyn wandered from the vehicle to the wooden veranda. Here, especially on the floor boards, one of which had broken, the white paint had long worn off and nobody could be bothered to renew it.

A crude, archaic buzzer sounded, when the mayor rang the bell. After a while, an unsure-looking woman in her late thirties went to the door, pushed a child through the only open side door and locked it, and then pulled out her keys to open the locks installed at the front door. It spoke volumes when a children's home had all it's exits solidly locked. "* Wow, Mrs.. Mayor! What an unexpected honour! Welcome."

Jaclyn laughed, obliged and stepped in. "* Thank you. It's Doctor Wimble by the way."

The woman dusted her dress and bowed slightly. "* Oh my, I'm so sorry, Doctor."

"* No worries, it isn't usual for me to visit unannounced like this." She calmed the fill-in caretaker with a smile. "* It's a pleasure. I would like to see Mrs.. Foster, please."

An expected shadow crept over her host's face. "* Oh, goodness. You don't know. Our valued Mrs.. Foster isn't with us any more." Unsurprised and unfazed, Jaclyn slowly headed past Mrs.. Foster's promoted assistant, who proceeded to follow her to the stairs that led to the late Mrs.. Foster's office. "* She was murdered. Revenant Jack has claimed her life!"

Oh goodness indeed, not Mrs.. Foster! Who could have expected Jack to drag her away and surgically remove her spleen? Certainly, Jaclyn would not. She stopped and put on a devastated expression. "* Oh my, I am so sorry! I really didn't know."

"* It's alright. Who is safe these days anyway? Everyone here is still in shock!" Hearing hat, Jaclyn glared onto one of the photos of the more recent gatherings of one of the several dozen-bed-large bedrooms. There were maybe four or five humans, the rest were just Orcs now. Yes, she could figure the children that were here now to value their late caretaker.

She nodded and caught herself, maintaining her concerned expression. "* Indeed. Even so, I would still like to visit her office"

With no hesitation, Mrs.. Foster's loyal assistant hasted past her up the stairs, to guide her to the office she was already heading for. "* Right this way, Miss." On the third floor, she led the mayor past the last few steps of the greyed-out staircase, past one more set of decrepit walls, to the end of the hall, the wing where Mrs.. Foster used to live and work. Here, the walls shun in bright, clean white and were lined with modern art pieces all along the length between the doors, all of which were kept in golden framings, much more intricate in their embellishment than the blurbs of random colours they were holding. Behind the door at the end, secured with three different locks, all of which needed to be opened with a different key each, was an even more overloaded office. Every inch of the ends of the furniture and the bottom of the walls, was laced with ornaments, small, hand-made figurines, paintings, and small framed photos depicting people of all age groups. Elderly, adults, young adults, children and youths, Mrs.. Foster's extended family, all of which were deceased or were going to be made to decease before long.

"* Everything is the way she left it. Please make yourself comfortable. Would you like a cup of coffee?"

"* Tea please. Some black tea. Green tea if you have none." The humble assistant nodded and rushed down the hallway and downstairs. The coffee machine was always filled and ready to run on the press of a button, in case the caretakers ever felt like coffee. The kettle and all the bags for tea were stowed away between many corners of piled-up random objects and in different places at that. The caretakers didn't drink tea and if the children wanted any, they had to descend into the spider-ridden and dirty storage below, unearth the strewn around kettle and tea and boil the water themselves under strict supervision of one of the caretakers to keep them from touching any of the food supplies that were only stored in and next to the kitchen. So the promoted assistant would take some time to get everything together and done.

This gave Jaclyn plenty of time to walk past the main desk, open up the very long drawers in the back and sift through all of Mrs.. Foster's old files. She kept everything here. Several decades worth of paperwork was stored in these drawers, all neatly arranged in chronological order. She got to work. To sifting through her files, but not all of them. She was looking for something very specific. Somewhere between nineteen ninety-eight and nineteen-ninety-nine. Something new, something that made it so that Mrs.. Foster could suddenly afford to live the high life in her own, self-indulgent and petty way, and that would give her reason to make very drastic changes to how she managed her orphanage, entirely at the expense of the human children that made up the entirety of the children here at the time. There were bills for replacements of broken furniture, kitchen utensils, correspondence from other children's homes, paperwork on admission and adoption of children, payout notices from an insurance company, all of this was just a load of irrelevant distractions to her. She was wondering whether Mrs.. Foster had removed what she was looking for, but considering it probably ran over contracts she couldn't afford to destroy, and that this was the triple-locked office not even the new children were allowed to enter, that was very unlikely.

After looking for a bit, she found a letter from a humanitarian charity organization. It was correspondence between her and that charity, discussing the offer of a financial grant, that gave Jaclyn a rough indicator, when or where to look, pointing her towards other letters slightly later than this one. All she needed to do, was follow this trail of letters, until she found it. And there it was, the answer she was looking for. The contract and several attachments to it, detailing a financial grant that secured a ridiculously large, monthly payout into the budget of the orphanage, which Mrs.. Foster was free to allocate however she saw fit, and almost all of which according to the accounting after it, flowed straight into a separate, private bank account, presumably straight into Mrs.. Foster's pockets. It was named 'The Variety Grant', issued, organized and offered by the 'LoveDontHate' Foundation. In exchange for the payout, it bound Mrs.. Foster to a wide set of obligations all relating to how she ran the orphanage. They included her pledging to dedicate every decision to pursuing an increased ethnic variety among the children of her children's home.

It obliged her to take in 'children of tan', Orc children to put it in clear words, and to dedicate the home's resources and staff to caring for and accommodating them. She had to provide a 'safe and welcoming' environment for them, and should these 'more various' children ever, in the contract's own words, 'feel', unwelcome which was in no way described or further specified and thus was completely subjective and at the whim of the Orc children involved, she would lose any claim to the grant, all the money that came with it, and would even have to pay back a two-digit percentage of the total that was paid. So this was why any rules the home had, only ever applied to humans. If any of these new and 'more various' children wanted to, they could beat down, injure, and even deprive other, human children of the only meal a day they had. In some cases for weeks on end. It wasn't just that Mrs.. Foster couldn't penalize the new children for any behaviour they expressed either, the human children here couldn't fight back. Fighting back was violence, and thus a break to the rules, which were then enforced with utmost prejudice, even with an unreasonable harshness to deter other children from trying to defend themselves, too. Somehow, Jaclyn knew that the new children that came here, came here roughly knowing that they had this special above-the-rules status and abused it with glee.

And Miss Foster had no intentions of changing that. In fact, measurable increases in variety, the measure was based entirely on the percentage of human children, were coupled with enormous bonuses and the dates of two of these payouts for such bonuses matched one-to-one with dates that rang some very loud bells in Jaclyn's mind. They were dates where children - human children - committed suicide and could immediately be replaced with more imported ones from the south. This was the entire spiel here. She couldn't just pass them off to adopting parents, that would violate the contract because it reduced 'variety' in local families. She would watch and facilitate the new Orc children bullying the human children into suicide, call the foundation to ask to measure the orphanage's variety. More Orc children got a free place to stay and meals on the human taxpayer, she got her big payout and was at the same time, not accountable for the child's death, because she didn't kill them. She was - in the literal sense - paid to make the children she was trusted with, kill themselves.

Long before she was done dissecting all of this, the timid younger woman came back upstairs and saw the documents laid out on the table. "* Oh, I didn't know you intended to look into her files." Not good. She had to go about this in a way that didn't get her afraid of attracting legal trouble. Not that it mattered, this assistant should be more worried about Jack than the police.

"* Yes, I've been looking around to see whether some spaces for children and youths were doing enough to bring variety to my city. But it seems, you are sufficiently dedicated to this goal."

She could see the relief in the assistant's softening expression. "* Yes, variety was always very important to the late Mrs.. Foster."

"* Yes, I'm seeing that. I am interested in starting a venture involving a grant like this one, and need to see what I need to get their approval. Would you mind making me some copies on all related documents, so I can secure compliance with everything in advance? I would like to make a good first impression on them."

"* Certainly." Pretending to approve of it was insanely effective in getting incriminating evidence. Not that that mattered, bigger things were going to happen long before a lawsuit using any of this would lead to any actual conviction. It just helped get some names to kill some time with, until it was all over. A polite good-bye later, the mayor set off for her next destination for the day. Patiently, and regularly checking, she waited until she was in her car and gaining enough of a distance to be sure the assistant couldn't see her, even if she for some reason rushed to the closest window and stared at her. Once she was sure, her concerned face shifted to a wide grin. Yes, Jack the Ripper had claimed the life of Mrs.. Foster.

And it was fun.

Next up was a place she was visiting for the fourth time. Once a week, she came here, parked her car outside and, in order and with nothing to hide, went through all the security checks of Enkate City's main prison. The guards already expected her, opened up to let her through the increasingly rusty and squeaky metal gates, between dark, rough and often dirty walls. She followed her weekly route until she came to the visiting room, where the prisoner she asked for was already being huddled to the seat on the other side of the wall. It was a broken, malnourished and visibly wounded man, confused beyond belief. His name was Henry Ironside. He was a husband and father, until he got convicted of stabbing his wife thirty-nine times in the chest with a kitchen knife. Jaclyn though, somehow knew he hadn't really stabbed his wife. As it was usual, the two of them picked up the phone and faced each other. Anything resembling introductions had long been done before, so through the phone and the window of the wall, the only question he asked was the obvious one that was always left unanswered. "* Why do you keep coming here?" She didn't respond. She never responded. He only found out who she was, from a guard telling him She only came here to stare at him. Jaclyn placed a hand on the bullet-proof glass. Her eyes grew heavy, until a single tear escaped each one and ran down her cheeks. "* Why do you keep visiting me? Answer me! Come on!" The confused man grew more and more agitated, until the guards came along and dragged him away again. Jaclyn remained seated in place, listening as his shouting faded into distant echoes and eventually merged into the background noise of a busy prison. He wasn't going away, she would still visit him next week.

After all this, all she wanted to do outside was pretty much done. She had the entire end of the afternoon and the evening to dedicate to her house guest. She took a quick trip through some rather ghastly neighbourhoods to collect something she needed. She couldn't go without it. And with her plastic container filled with what she needed, it was time to go home. To travel all the way back to her little corner of the City's outskirts, up the hill and through the wide doors into her large, empty house. A palace for her grace. A tombstone to fit the lives that had accumulated. With the front doors locked, all the curtains shut, she was ready. Ready for the part of this day, that she was looking forward to for an entire month. She turned on all lights, put on some classical music on the sound system that halled across all the bigger halls of her house, before she took the utensils she needed, opened the door to her deep, well-isolated basement and locked it behind her again. She went all the way down and turned on the lights to reveal the heavily breathing, but still alive man down here. An Orc, strapped to a long iron table, custom made to keep and secure people on it. She had spent a fortune on this cellar, long before things changed a month ago. Now, it was put to use to keep Habib here. Her old secretary, now weakened and visibly starved was getting understandably agitated when he became aware of her presence. "* What are you...what is that?" She came down the stairs, with a unprecedented, strange smile that for no reasons he could fathom, struck terror into him in a way he had never felt before.

"* I'm back home. And I brought something." She placed the plastic container on the floor, along with the solid and freshly-sharpened kitchen knife. "* Dirt. Hand-collected from the filthiest, drug- and disease-ridden parts of town I could come up with." Desperate, confused and unable to comprehend what was happening, the Orc simply stared at her, and kept up his weak but audible breaths.

For a few seconds, she stood there. Stared at him with this wide smile she had suppressed for so long. Now it was time so smile. And for once, this wasn't her usual 'I wish you dead'-smile. It was an 'I have you under my thumb and will kill you'-smile. "* What happened to you?" He had asked her too often, why she did this, but every other time they talked, he asked it, so she figured that was the question that was really on his mind.

Jaclyn gazed across his body. What used to be the bowstrings of a perfectly healthy Orc, was now shrunken together, visible folds emerged where the muscles had degenerated, a sign of very strong malnourishment, especially for a creature that required more frequent food intake than a human. She had given him water, but no food. Not one bit. For a month straight. "* Not such a pleasant thing - getting starved." She stepped closer and bent down only with her neck to gaze down at him with her smile and her wide-open eyes never wavering. "* Now that it is happening to you."

She got to him. His arms twitched, rattling the chains that hung off his fastened arm-pieces she had installed just for the sound when someone struggled. "* Why are you doing this?" Ah, she expected this.

She didn't move though. She only kept smiling. Staring. "* I should congratulate you. You came pretty far ahead in life. First an 'orphan' living separate from your Mom, now public office, secretary in a very large city's town hall. That is quite a feat." She subtly nodded to herself. "* Say, do you have any experience with forcible starvation?"

He only struggled more and tried to scream, as far as his broken voice allowed. "* What are you talking about?" How cute, for a moment he even tried to stretch his hands in her direction. He was either so malnourished or so desperate, he forgot for a moment that every part of him was safely locked in place.

The mayor simply out her hands together behind her back, tilted back a bit and started wandering in a circle around the cold, concrete floor. "* Say, what was the orphanage like? Was it comfortable?" She stopped, turned to him. He only stared at her and had no words to answer. "* All right. Let's ask this differently. It must have been hard for an Orc to make it in a human country. Say, did you have any human friends? Comrades? Acquaintances? Any contact with humans?" More silence. She raised her head and inhaled dramatically through her nose. It seemed having a conversation required a little incentive. With soft steps, she wandered to the cupboard on the opposite end of the cellar, opened it and examined the medieval weapons and instruments of torture inside. Something classic was going to have to do. Something that didn't directly damage the body, she wanted to do that with the knife. Then again, this was pointless. She might as well use the knife instead. "* Very well. I presume I should just begin then."

Finally, wandering back to the knife made him stir again. "* Yes! No! I mean...I knew humans!" She didn't stop though until she had the knife in her hand. But with it, she came closer again.

"* Is that so? Tell me about them."

He was visibly struggling to come up with anything. "* I - uh - It's kind of far back - I - there was a guy!"

"* A boy? Tell me about him."

"* Rich! Yes! That's the name! Richard."

"* Aha, Richard you say. Were you friends?"

"* No...sort of..." He could tell from her expression that she didn't believe that second part. "* Not really."

"* Not really. Aha, why? What did your interactions consist of?"

"* I..." Good. He was squirming and reacting to every impulse she gave him the way she wanted him to. Playing with him like that was even more enjoyable than she thought. "* Me and some guys..."

"* I assume that means you weren't on such good terms." The trembling man shook his head. "* I see. Was he the only human child at the orphanage you had any interactions with? I would think not, I mean you were there for quite some time. Sure there were others." Now very eager to answer, as every time he hesitated, she moved that knife a little closer, he nodded. "* All right." Jaclyn paused, raised her head and closed her eyes to pretend to think about her next question. Even though she knew exactly where she was going. "* Regardless of whether it was positive or negative, what is the first name you come up with? What is the first human child you really remember spending a lot of time with?"

The terrified Orc's increasingly empty gaze rushed from one corner of the ceiling to the other. "* Uh...Tim? Argh!" An ear-shattering scream escaped him against his will, when with full force, Jaclyn clenched onto the knife's grip with it's blade pointing down and buried it in his upper arm.

 _ **"Wrong answer."**_ The right answer was Ted. But close, that she had to admit.

Now hyperventilating, he looked around, struggling to come up with the right answer on the next try. "* I...I don't know."

"* All right, it is time to apply the **_'ointment'_** then." A quick trip to the drawer next to the cupboard allowed her to get herself a pair of rubber gloves. Not perfect, but it would do. On her way back she didn't just ignore his repeated pleas for mercy. She reveled in them. And it was all the sweeter when he flinched the way he did when she picked up some of the filth she collected in the streets, and worked to press it into the open wound. "* Any other human childhood names you recall?" It was fine things like this made her feel really alive.

This had his breaths accelerate. All the more a second later. He seemed desperate enough to hope to guess his way out of this, even at the risk of getting it wrong again. "* I don't - Bob? Frank? Clara? - " He had to scream once again off the top of what was left of his lungs, when out of impulse, Jaclyn rammed the knife in the side of his stomach.

 _ **"Almost!"**_ She shouted with a long-missed degree of ecstasy. "* You almost got it right!"

"* Clara - I - I don't know! Miss Wimble what is all this?" His mind was already blending out. "* Mrs.. Wimble!"

With something surging right through her, Jaclyn got down to pick up a significantly larger amount of dirt and mash it into his new wound. "That is not my name!" These kinds of impulses from seeing him suffer like this made her entire body tremble with excitement.

"* Please! Stop! It hurts so much! What about these names? What are they to you? Who are you?"

Finally, the question that mattered! More or less completely in affect and out of her own control, she pulled out the knife. "I am the evil they fear!", Jaclyn screamed while burying it in his chest. But she immediately pulled it out to stab him again, screaming: "The demon that comes!", only to pull it out yet again and strike right for his carotid and finally scream with with the blood spilling right in front of her, some of it onto her from her final, deadly blow. "The end of all things!" Yes! It was so vindicating standing there and reveling in his spilled blood. She had done good on this day. His death came faster than planned, but it was wonderful regardless. "I am..."

* * *

A lot of the things that Jaclyn Wimble said and did lately, made no sense to her. In fact, nothing she did made any sense to her. She had completely lost control of every minute decision she made. Why did Revenant Jack suddenly start hunting down the family of that caretaker rather than prostitutes like he was known to take? Why did she visit this stranger in prison? And why would she abduct and kill her secretary? She only started making these strange choices against her will a month ago. That girl. It must have had to do with that girl.

It started out of nowhere, and in the literal sense, overnight. Almost two months after these new creatures, these 'Monsters' came to the surface, she started having nightmares every night. In fact, her dreams always started out normally, but in each one, at some point, she would come by a wide, dead tree that stretched itself over a field of golden flowers. It would be at random locations, wherever her dreams took her. One time, it even made her aware that she was dreaming, since the tree was just there, in the middle of the reception room of a hospital. And on the field of golden flowers - always - stood a girl. A little girl that couldn't be more than ten. White skin, slightly less than shoulder-long, brown hair, with a green-and-yellow striped sweater. And a wide-open smile that terrified her - always pointed exactly at her direction and following her every move. That smile followed her, wherever she went. Even when she went to completely different places, that smile followed her. Every morning, she woke up drenched in sweat, thinking about nothing other than this smile.

Then, Saturday came around. The day when she would get some release. Someone in a position like hers could afford to do this with a schedule, seeing as she had a fairly liberal police chief put in place who asked no questions and would not dare to let the flagship of progress that was his mayor get into harm's way. She could rely on any nosy investigators quickly getting made to look into things other than a revived urban legend. Saturday was the day of the week when Jack the Ripper would strike. By foot and without her cell phone - or wallet for that matter, but shrouded in scarves, sunglasses and a hat, she made her way for the red light district of the city. A bit further off from various establishments with pink and soft-blue shining neon signs, stood some scantily clad women, some wearing furs, some wearing stocking, some smoking. Still covered up, she walked up to them to enlist their services. The first one rejected her. Not even all of the ones on the street served female clientele. Too many bailed out of paying.

The second one already cooed and chuckled at the bound together pile of cash Jaclyn flashed up from her handbag. She seemed quite interested. All the more when Jaclyn flashed her face to reveal who she was. "* Ooh I'm honoured. I didn't know you were this kind of woman."

She bent forward to whisper into the hooker's ear. "* I can show you a whole other kind of woman I am." A chuckle here, a held hand there, and she followed her where she wanted to go. She led her through the crooked streets at the edge of the district, until they came by a run-down house she had scouted out to make sure it was empty, ahead of time. "* Here's a good place. I don't like to have an audience." Once they were up the stairs of the decayed, wooden house, with what was left of the front door closed, the Mayor pulled out her garrote and wrapped it around the unwitting hooker's neck. Immediately wrapping it around, with each arm on either side of her, she choked the woman beyond any capacity to defend herself. There, it finally began. First the surprise over what she pulled up, probably with a momentous different expectation on what the garrote was to be used for. Followed by the realization of Jaclyn's intentions, an attempt at struggling and freeing herself. And then, once she noticed her struggles didn't free her, the despair in her eyes. Soon, little by little, she would see her life slip away. Jaclyn got more and more fired up in anticipation of seeing this and the moment of ecstasy it would bring to her.

But there was no such thing. In fact, there was nothing. Before that moment came, when the hooker she hired would die, everything went black. She thought for a moment, that she was losing consciousness or something, but she could look around. She could feel herself look around, but there was nothing. Everything except her body, which she could see as if it was illuminated for some reason, was pitch black, wherever she looked. The wavering surface of a body of water, that she was somehow standing on, tickled her feet. Then the fear gripped her back. Because there she was, just about twenty feet away from her. That girl from her nightmares. Staring and smiling at her with her wide open eyes. Waiting for Jaclyn to calm down.

Once her panicked pants settled down, finally, after all this time, she opened her mouth. "Greetings." It was still pitch black. Everything was, yet somehow she could see her clearly. "I am Chara."

She trembled and wished to step back, but she could see nothing and only feel water, what if she fell into the depths? "* What...who..."

"Am I? So many people have this feeling. They can feel that they are despised. That someone wishes ill upon them. They can't explain it to themselves, so they project it onto others. They accuse anyone around them of being the one that hates them, and are easily manipulated into hating them back. But do you want to know the truth?" As soon as Jaclyn had finally worked up the courage to take a tiny step back, this 'Chara' took a step forward. "The feeling of being hated. This unshakable feeling that someone, somewhere, somehow, despises you with every fibre of their being. That feeling is me." For a brief moment, her face changed, to something even more disturbing, but it went back to her regular creepy smile, and Jaclyn couldn't really make out how. "I hate you - all of you - so much. And people exactly like you are the reason why." Chara didn't give her a chance to ask what was going on, or how to explain herself. "What you did just before, what you do so often. I know why you do it. Power. You yearn for power. You feel inadequate. You fear that you're not understood, so you want to feel powerful enough to eradicate whoever might come for you." Jaclyn had to gulp. She didn't know why this girl disturbed her so much, all she knew was that she wanted to get out of here - wherever she was. She wanted this to end. "But you're deluding yourself. Just murdering random women who don't make any efforts to defend themselves, doesn't project power, and it doesn't make you powerful either." With a deadly calm, Chara turned around her hand and offered it roughly in Jaclyn's direction. Everything she said, she kept in her strict, monotonous and calm done. "I can give you power. More power than you could possibly imagine. You could eradicate every enemy you meet. You could reach the absolute. You could erase the whole world in a heartbeat." And for a short time, she was listening and calming down.

"Although, for that, I need something in return." The hand she offered pointed at Jaclyn. "You. You have something I don't. A soul. You will give me yours, and I will make you more powerful than any office in the world could ever make you."

Under tremors and whimpers, Jaclyn tried to inch further back, but something was stopping her. "* I don't...my soul? I don't want to lose my soul!"

She was all the more unsettled, when now the smile was gone. "Oh." Chara was surprised by this. "I'm sorry, there must be a misunderstanding." Under twitching and smacking noises, Chara's eyes pressed and reverted into her head, until only dark, empty eye-sockets were left. She spoke with a voice that turned deeper, more distorted, as if dozens of people were talking at the same time, the drone in every word sending tremors through all of Jaclyn's body. **_"What makes you think I'm giving you a choice?"_** Chara raised her head and started laughing. The blackness of the void they were in flared up in deep blood red and the water she was on was not water, it was blood, and several metre-long, pale arms shot out of this endless sea of blood to grab hold of Jaclyn's arms and legs as Chara lumbered towards her. Suddenly with a knife in her hand, she came closer, and her already disturbing face's mouth and eye-sockets started melting downwards. Panic struck the mayor more and more the closer she came, until the piercing pain of Chara's blade bit it's way right through her body.

All she could remember after that, were nines. But after that, she was back in the decayed house, with a fresh and not yet operated-on body in front of her. A quick look on her victim's cell phone revealed that not a second had passed. Quickly, she cleaned up after herself. Made sure that nothing would be left but the body with no traces of her. She didn't even bother to write a letter or remove some organs. That was when she first started noticing it. Her choices, her decisions, even her thoughts were not her own. And everything she did, was now different.


	45. Earth Magic

.

The Captain takes Charge

Chapter 02

Earth Magic

* * *

"The bond that Boss Monsters share, that connects their souls, their minds and lets them access each other's elemental magic remains for life, and draws them together for as long as it lasts. The only way to sever it for good, is to kill one of the two, leaving the other scarred forever, but no longer bound."

* * *

"* Is this really necessary? The young ones are already asking me where you're going." Out of routine and intimacy, none of the two needed to waste any words on the motions of her husband helping her dress. "* Life up there will continue, whether you venture up there now or not." Resintis was too caring not to ask her repeatedly not to go.

But with her turquoise cloak wrapped around her red robe, the delta rune cleanly stitched onto it in flawless white, Miarim Berrighan pulled her hood back and nuzzled her husband's nose. "* It is high time. My brother doesn't deserve this. It is time to make things right. It isn't just that I need to. I want to." She was uneasy herself, but she couldn't allow herself to put this off any longer. "* The clouds are heavier than they will ever get, the weather wears on all Monsters up above, and if the nights grow any colder, the clouds will only snow, not rain. And it is now that Toriel is most taxed with work. It is the optimal time. I cannot pass up this opportunity." One more time holding hands, one embrace, a hearty kiss, and a hurtful withdrawal later, they separated. Resintis would stay here to watch over her children. It was understandable that he feared for her, worried for her, missed her, and yearned for her to come back home soon, when she left for this little journey to the surface. It was mutual. But what they shared, was denied to her brother for reasons that Miarim Berrighan, formerly Miarim Dreemurr, saw unfit to withstand scrutiny. To make it worse, she kept contact with people that visited the surface. He wasn't only left heartbroken and alone. Every opportunity she got, this self-righteous woman used to further stomp on him to drive more blades into his heart.

If no-one else was to confront her in a way she deemed necessary, then she had to do it herself. And this Monday night would be the time for her to do so.

* * *

As the months passed and the Monsters that intended to, needed to get ready for their college classes, the Boss Monsters had a more and more busy time of their own. Well, Toriel had, Asgore was mostly left to worry about her staying in her office for longer by the day. In order to have the children that attended it have the legal recognition of having passed certain grades in human schools, she had to go through a lot of paperwork for every single one. And this was only one of several fronts of that kind. The work was simply piling up. By the day, she stayed at the school for longer. By the day, she appeared more exhausted. Sometimes, he just headed home before she closed up, because it was getting too late. On Friday evening, when they visited Undyne and Alphys, she was barely awake throughout the evening. Eventually, when that was over, when they were already on the streets lighted only faintly by the street lights and Toriel was already guiding the child back home, Asgore stopped her. "* Wait!" She stopped to hear him out, didn't bother to turn around, he was left to talk to her shoulder. "* Toriel, you seem a bit worn out this weekend. You have had a very hard week. I was wondering if I could..."

Only then did she turn around her head in a cutting motion and spoke with a very cold tone in her voice. "* Don't even think about it!" He was prepared for her not being at his feet begging for his help, but these words, and the way she said them, he didn't expect it and it injured him more than he thought it would. He was already tormented enough to be slightly trembling. "* Don't. Even. Think about it!" One more swipe forward with her head, and she was dragging a concerned looking Frisk away. Leaving him once again hurt and alone in the dark. Silently, but without rest and near tears at all times, Asgore wandered home. There was something he was asking himself. Whenever there was a similar interaction between them, he did, but he could never put the question into words. He had put it into words in the past, but he had gotten used to the feeling so much, that he didn't need to. Back at home with the door closed and taking in the silence, he figured that it was only a distraction from how empty this house was, without even the child to live here. Feeling yet again like a dagger had been driven through his heart, he didn't bother with tea, he just turned off all the lights and went straight to bed.

He didn't get up until it was mid-day on the next morning. The weather up here was so rainy, except in the summer, the plant life didn't need that much watering anyway. The rounds through the village he made every day were mostly for himself and to keep an eye on the many parts of Shoneon village. Except maybe to get a glass of water, Asgore saw no reason to get up. The world could do without him for a day. Even on Sunday he didn't bother leaving the house. He merely made himself a few meals, picked up a newspaper to read and stayed at home. For a while, he thought about just staying away. Leaving Toriel alone with her growing and unending heap of work. Then he remembered how trying to just leave her alone with these kinds of problems went last time, when the Rosenberg Foundation canceled the school's funding. It didn't go so well. But if she would be so cruel on the next time he would just walk up and ask her if she needed help, he didn't wish to do that either.

The weather was very humid on the Monday that followed. It was going to rain soon. His trip to the school, across the village, home and back to the school would not be necessary. He spent it at home, making himself some tea, ordering some food, maybe watching the news online and tending the more demanding plants in the little greenhouse he could go to from his living room. By evening, it was slowly starting to rain. And it got stronger as the hours passed. Comfortably sitting at the table, with a little blanket laid out on the chair he was sitting on, he took a sip of his tea, turned a page on the newspaper he was reading and spent his time doing nothing more than that. Watching, and reading. Drinking tea. And waiting. Waiting for longer than he expected. A pressing shadow wore down on his spine. It was turning past ten o'clock and he was getting uneasy. No, not uneasy. Sad. Sad at something he had come to terms with losing long ago. But no matter how hard he tried to get over her, he couldn't. Something kept drawing him back to her. Made him feel involved enough that her problems were his problems. This was a mistake. He was deluding himself. Or so he thought, until finally, at half past eleven, the bell rang.

He could feel the cold wind blowing and some of the heavy rain, now shattering onto the streets, fall inside the moment the door was opening even just a bit. A silent, but seething Boss Monster, under an umbrella but mostly soaked in water anyway, was glaring at him from behind the door. Toriel must have stayed at work all the way until now, then marched through the rain, all the way here. "* Oh golly, you must be freezing. Won't you come in?"

She didn't say a word, but very clearly refused to come in. Being out in this unnatural autumn cold was worth one more opportunity to push him away. "* What is this?" She finally spoke, pulled forth a specific larger and better isolated handbag she used more and more because of the weather up here, and took out a familiar, opened page-sized envelope. And this glare, this glare that spoke of seething rage would never stop. After two mere seconds of silence, she repeated her question. "* What is this?"

This was the moment he had to show strength. He took a deep breath, faced her with a clear mind and with a clear stare right back into her eyes, answered. "* I would think it to be pretty clear what it is."

For a moment, she turned it around, pulled out the pinned-together pages to look at it's front page, and angrily shoved it back in the envelope. "* How dare you!" She thought about it again, laid the underside of her umbrella on her shoulder, while she pulled it out and went through the pages.

"* I saw a need for it, so I made an offer. Can you judge me for making an offer?" It was an application. An application for a position as vice principal or a teacher. "* You are loaded with work. You cannot do this on your own, and we can't trust too many humans. From a purely rational standpoint, I am the best choice, and judging from your actions, you haven't had any serious other applicants either way."

She glared at him up from the pages she was reading. "* What makes you think you could do this? What makes you think I would entrust any children to you for that matter?"

It was a struggle, staying stern, but he could do it. He just had to suffer through every wracking word she threw at him. "* Was I not near children even up here before? Besides, you will see flawless recommendations from all schools around New Home from page ten on. Places that I visited, taught life-guiding values to children without a single complaint. Any degrees you could ask for are at page twenty-eight and onward."

She twitched at that last bit, pulled up the pages in question and pointed at them. "* Those were all short-hand issued by you!"

He stayed formal. He had to. "* Are they or are they not issued by not only a Monster with authority to do so, but the king of Monsters himself?" This was where her silence started to be less cruel and more awkward. "* Is your contention with this me being the king of Monsters? Is this a confession of intent for high treason?" She stayed silent, but her body language revealed her to be on the defensive. "* If not, then what is your contention?" Toriel started breathing heavily through her nostrils. Audibly over the sound of the torrents streaming down the roof, onto the streets and off her umbrella. This was the time for Asgore to loosen up his stance and try to talk reason into her. "* Toriel. I am not asking you to be my wife. Only my employer. Maybe even your colleague. Yes, we have our issues. We have our past quarrels. Can we not put those aside to work together on something we both want to see built and working?"

Yes! It was working. She was trembling, he could see her struggle with herself. Ever so slightly, she was looking down, thinking. A little light of hope was shining from within him. For the first time, it felt like something within him was healing. Then, with one tremor, she stood there again. Stiff, cold and contemptuous. "* Go die in a ditch!" With this, it was all shattered again. He was shattered. Toriel put the envelope back into her handbag and with a distinct step, pulled and slammed Asgore's front door shut from outside. Mouth trembling and tears surfacing, the king stood in place, in front of the closed door for who knew how long. He couldn't sleep for a single moment that night and the sounds of his mutters were drowned out by the pattering of the rain on any surfaces of the cold and empty house's walls.

* * *

Enraged, Toriel stomped through the barely lit streets. She felt each large drop of rain water strike against the surface of her umbrella. Her umbrella barely gave any cover either. More than the entire lower half of her robe was completely wet and made her feel this immense cold all the more strongly. Only the anger at Asgore's gall, his insolence, gave her enough strength to march on, slowly making her way back to her own home. The streets were empty, you could barely see anywhere. The rain was strangely dense, in fact it was so dense, it was like a fog. She struggled to even see where she was going. At least the streets were empty. Everyone stayed at home and no shady figures were wandering the streets. Until after taking a turn at one crossing, in only faint, dark blue light, right under a broken street lamp. This immense, unbearable cold was getting worse and worse, the closer she came to the motionless shadow that stood there. Broad and tall like herself, a well-aged Boss Monster. And upon coming closer, she even saw her wear a robe with the royal crest. Only that she didn't bother with an umbrella. The water was just running down her body, and she didn't seem to care the slightest. She was so covered in water, you couldn't see any patterns of water drops or water spots on her robes, everything was evenly soaked.

Less angry and more concerned, Toriel looked around. In most of the human homes that surrounded them, the lights were long out or the blinds were down. She was alone in an endless darkness, surrounded by water, beyond and as far as the eye could see. And this shadow wouldn't move. It was facing straight in her direction. When she got to the crossing the other Boss Monster was at, she was certain this cold was getting worse, the closer she got to her. And as soon as she was close enough to the person blocking her way, she could tell why. Straightened down from the water washing over them at all times, hung the lengthened strands of a visible mother of five. And the face most people wouldn't be able tell from any other Boss Monster. Miarim Berrighan. Asgore's sister. She heard a loud snort come from the solidly-standing woman. For a full minute, the two of them stared at each other. Not moving. Only staring. Hearing and feeling the rain hammering and running down the two of them. For a moment, Toriel attempted to start moving along and past her, when Miarim simply shifted further to stand in her way and finally started talking. "* I have always hated you, you know." Words that didn't need to be said. Toriel stared at her, knowing that more was to come. "* From the very first day you set your eyes on my dear Asgore. I knew you would be a bad influence."

The subtle fizzling noise above her head sent Toriel's heart pumping within a second. Knowing what was coming, she jumped backwards. A block of solid ice, exactly her size, dropped itself on the ground right where she had stood and shattered, sending splinters everywhere, some of which were launched to strike Toriel and hurt from the sheer force that remained after the solid chunk crashed on the ground. What had gotten into her to attack her like this out of nowhere? "* You grew up Underground. What did you even know about humans? Only just hardened by what we had lost, he was prepared for the surface. He was prepared because he had been here."

She soon noticed she wasn't the only one Miarim was targeting. All around her, ice blocks fell from the sky onto the houses and lawns. And even in this moment, little daggers of pure ice were forming in the hands of her apparent foe. She faced back at her and shouted. "* People live in these houses!"

As if prepared for such a reaction, Miarim instantly screamed right back: "* Humans live in these houses!" And launched one of the daggers straight at Toriel. Immediately ready for battle, she stretched out both hands in Miarim's direction and summoned a little pillar of fire. But it was much weaker than what she intended and only barely enough to melt the dagger before it struck her. More alarmed than before, she looked at her hands. Nothing was wrong with her. It was the cold. And the rain, putting out all fire she conjured up. Her fire didn't last, and barely made it a few feet from her hands when she invoked it. "* Humans took my baby brother!" Miarim stepped forward, and with a swipe, threw the next dagger, which Toriel, now finding herself stepping backwards, could again only barely melt. "* They took my mother!" There came the next dagger and the next ice block. The hand where her first dagger originally was, was surrounded with a spiral of pure blue energy. Slowly and surely, it was being encased in a cone, no, a lance of pure ice. "* What would you know of humans?" With a grunt, she charged right at her with the lance. Toriel couldn't do much through regular magic. She stepped aside, but any fire she invoked to try and strike back, when she had the time, was drowned out in a several-cubic-foot-large drop of water that was forming around her hands. And while all this happened, a second lance formed around Miarim's other hand. "* You have no experience with them! You haven't lost any loved ones!" Under deep breaths, obviously preparing something else, Miarim stepped away, further until she was barely visible, but calling out to her loud enough to understand every word. "* So of course the moment you had any words to get in, you sweet-talked him. 'Warmed him up' to coming here and living with these creatures!"

On top of the ice blocks damaging the roofs of the nearby residencies, slowly but surely, Toriel saw something atop Miarim's ice lances. She couldn't quite make out what it was though. "* That is why I knew from the beginning that you didn't bide well!" Then with shock, she realized what it was. Torrents of wind were circling around them. And they were becoming stronger, until visible little tornadoes formed at the tips and grew in length. "* But Asgore didn't **listen!** " She swung one of her arms around, unleashing an evergrowing torrent of spinning wind. Toriel could barely duck and move to the side to dodge it, but it stretched so far, it reached the wooden perch of a house behind her and carved up the wood, launching splinters of wood in random directions before it dispersed. This woman was far past the point where she could care whether any of this belonged to someone. She just started moving closer to the increasingly scared Boss Monster that was backing off. She had to get her somewhere where she wouldn't further damage the people's homes. But she was in the middle of the village, where could she go? "* Nobody listened! Nobody listened as you started to be more and more controlling and nobody listened when you started dictating most of his choices! Of course it didn't mean much beginning. But all other Monsters are as short-sighted as they are short-lived. And of course, when this human invaded our realm, you had to take them in! You couldn't fend them off or pass them off to someone else to look after, you had him take them in himself, because you were the great and mighty Toriel! You must think you are so enlightened, you knew it all. You knew all about the surface which **you had never been to in your life!** " With another shriek and another swing, Miarim launched an even longer wind attack. Incapable of fighting back, Toriel got down, and only saw how it cut deep enough to almost chop down a nearby tree, little stones were flung out of place, lawns were torn up, the devastation every attack caused was horrendous. "* I told him this human, this 'Chara' was a mistake. But he **would listen to you over me!** " The humans wouldn't dare step out at this, but this strike shattered a glass window that wasn't covered by blinds. Instead, they just pulled the blinds down to cover the opening and stayed inside.

Listening closely and then looking more closely, Toriel was shocked at hearing and seeing Asgore's sister sob like this between each sentence. "* But then it was too late. Everything was lost. His only son dead, the one moment had come when you could prove you were of value! And you **just ran away!** " Even now, the attacks were growing in intensity, and Toriel had to jump to the side to not get hit by another ice block forming right above her. She couldn't let her keep doing this. She needed to do something. Toriel grew desperate. She tried to form one big ball of fire, but even the moment she did, it was already shrinking and quick to stop burning. What little of it came even close to the incoming Boss Monster in front of her was simply doused by another blob of water joining together right where it was arriving. "* Keep trying, it won't work! Your fire is useless here!" It wasn't just the rain, her fire was weakened by this unbearable cold that was emanating from Asgore's furious sister. "* It is too late." She whimpered loud enough, Toriel could hear it all the way to where she stood. "* You are now bound to Asgore. The mistake is made." Miarim flashed her teeth when she broke out in tears once again. "* I can't forgive you, Toriel! But I want my brother to be happy, and do whatever I can to make him close to happy!" Knowing nothing more to do, than to launch bigger and bigger fire attacks, from fireballs, to pillars, to attempts at walls of fire, Toriel kept stepping away and Miarim kept stepping closer. Everything she threw at the other Boss Monster was either doused and drowned out, struck aside with incoming pieces of ice or simply pushed aside through gusts of wind. Miarim was a juggernaut of wind and ice.

"* Your fire can't save you Toriel!" Miarim accelerated, swung around one arm, and this one time, the wind struck Toriel. Immense pain surged through all of her, she could feel it grinding through her body. If she was just a human, half her body would be cut open by now. From the sheer pain, she collapsed and could only stop her fall with her hands and knees, all of which were in pain after that. "* But you are bound to Asgore! You're just so cold, so remorseless, you refuse to acknowledge it even if only by making use of it!" When she had fallen to the ground, Miarim had stopped as well. "* You could be so much stronger than me! If you only got over yourself and opened up to my brother. If you could at least do this, after you threw away everything else you could do. The difference is clear. I am weaker on a level playing field, but the circumstances are not the same. I am in tune with my husband, Toriel! I can draw from his power! You think yourself to be so virtuous, your head is in the clouds." Still catching her breath, trying to recover from that attack, Toriel barely noticed Miarim coming closer, but before she knew any better, she felt the full force of her foot smash into her stomach and forcing her to turn around under a shriek of pain. "* Look at yourself! Pathetic! You're only a weak, miserable piece of filth, and you choose to be just out of misplaced pride and vindictiveness. I am doing my brother a favour!"

"* You wouldn't!", Toriel shouted, using all the strength she had.

Miarim simply tilted her head upwards and glared down at Toriel with wide-open eyes. "* Go ahead if you can. Acknowledge your bond with Asgore! You couldn't overcome your **conceit** if your life depended on it! And now it really does." She raised her hand, now encased in a lance so big it covered her entire arm and only left space for her to move it where it really had to, it stretched out from her shoulders, as if she was wearing wide shoulderplates. A cutting whirlwind, bigger than anyone before gathered around the top of it and stretched higher than the upper floors of any of the houses here. "* Prove me wrong! Survive this!" Toriel couldn't believe her eyes, when the motions began and Miarim really did start swinging her arm with this enormous wind attack headed straight for her. In a moment of panic, Toriel inhaled gathered up any strength she could muster, and swung around with her arms. Instantaneously, under ear-shattering cracks, the pavement broke open, a slope of solid earth shot out of the ground and covered Toriel right where the wind currents were coming for her. Where the broken-up streets met the winds, pieces of tar and concrete were scattered all around, she heard several windows break. She could hear this struggle, she could feel it. She was pressing against the wind currents with more and more bits of the road. But eventually, it did fade. Eventually, it did stop. The wind eased up, stopped pressing against the ground she was shielding herself with, and gave her an opportunity to get back up. As soon as she could, Toriel got up from the protective shield she had raised to block Miarim's attack, but the moment she came out of hiding, her attacker was gone. Finally, scared humans came out of their houses wondering what this was and inspecting the damage that had been caused. By the time Asgore came out from hearing first the noise, then from villagers telling him about the destruction, Toriel was long gone. Home, pretending like nothing had happened. Without success of course, Frisk could tell that something was very wrong ahead of time, and before long, I told him exactly what had happened.

* * *

Asgore wasn't outside for long. Whatever really occurred at the inner part of the village, it was over by the time he arrived. Since he wasn't going to get any sleep anyway, he figured he could take a shower in his Boss-Monster-sized bathroom in the middle of the night. After slipping into something more comfortable and more importantly - dry - not that his new shirt would remain dry for long, he went back to bed. Back to thinking the same thing over and over. Why was Toriel being so cruel to him? She knew how sensitive he was to what she said and she used it at it's full extent to make him miserable wherever she could. He just wanted to help. He couldn't sleep the entire night. The closest thing to some rest he got, was when the rain subsided and he drifted into a half-awake state where some thoughts and imagined scenarios felt a little more real, as if he was dreaming, only that he wasn't. He couldn't sleep, so this was the closest thing to a real dream he could have. Like this, he would lie in bed, most of the time fully awake, staring at the curtain-covered window. Slowly watched the darkness of the night make way first for a red dawn, then the white light of the sun shining through the wall of clouds, in places, rays of light no longer obstructed, hit the edge of the bed. And his hand, giving it longed-for warmth. Even so, with no intent or reason to get up, he lay there. Taking in the silence. Waiting for the day to pass.

He thought he was in his half-dreaming state, when he heard, without the clearly audible footsteps of the mailman's solid shoes, the rattling of his letterbox. He couldn't be bothered to get up and check for a whole other half hour. But then he pushed himself up under groans of discontent. He didn't want to get up, but he couldn't just spend every day staying in bed, could he? At first, he was still a bit groggy. He was never really awake, until he had his first cup of tea. The newspaper on the table was completely crumpled. The result of pages this thin in hands his size. That aside, he had long read everything interesting there anyway. The next newspaper was probably already outside, he just had to fetch it. But when he opened the letterbox, his heart skipped a beat. An envelope, the size of a letter. Addressed at him. For a few moments, he thought he had finally fallen asleep and was dreaming, but it listed Toriel as it's sender. It was hastily typed up with unresolved formatting errors, but was clearly from her, hand-signed. A letter inviting him to a job interview. Despite her storming off the way she did, she had an inexplicable change of heart. The next quarter of an hour he spent at the table, close to that letter, processing that this was really happening.


	46. Howdy, Partner

.

The Captain takes Charge

Chapter 03

Howdy, Partner

* * *

Dust and sand was whirled across the unpaved street by small gusts of wind. The sky was red, fitting for how much death was coming the way of this town. Wooden buildings peeked out between the few and far apart bushes of the valley, some with barely intelligible signs only hanging half-way above the entrances, lined up along both sides of an extremely long road. At the end of this road, the setting sun was blocked by a high, wooden stage that had been set up in front of the worn-down billboard that read this town's long forgotten name. Terrified of what was coming, the citizens all had either fled, or were hiding away in the broken shacks they called their homes. The road was empty, except for two lone souls, walking closer and closer to the stage. One of them, a human, dressed in a square-patterned shirt and a vest around it, a Stetson which he straightened out on the way, riding boots which he didn't bother changing ever since he had gotten off his horse. Around one shoulder, a solid leather cover was strapped, around the other, a drape was thrown and hanging loosely off both sides of it. The other, a blacksmith's assistant, still dressed in his work attire, and with a look that spoke of a complete lack of an idea what to do about what they were faced with. At the outer ends of the wide stage above, where the two were headed, bandits of all sides and shapes were standing and grabbing hold either of the billboard, or the crates and barrels between them. Their leader, a particularly dirt-covered human, a beard that could cover his whole face if it was flipped upwards, and with a straw in his mouth. "* Looks like ye came after all." Once the two were close enough, the bandits' leader spat out the straw, a heavy drop of spit accompanied it, as it fell to the ground with a weirdly loud noise. "* Guess it'sh tahm we got the party started. Boys!" After he shouted to his peers, they pulled the enormous white cloth off a much larger depot of barrels in-between the regular pile. "* Each one of these." He patted onto one of the barrels. "* Stuffed with gunpowder. Got one for eeevery single house, 'far as the eye can see! When ah said we're gonna bring down this town, ah meant it!"

The two stopped, when he said this. The human spoke up. "* Why?"

"* Why what?", the bandit asked and laughed.

"* You live off convoys. Which aren't going to come if you just burn this place down. No-one to supply, no supplies." Bandit scum were parasites. Parasites could not live without host.

All the more now, the leader burst out in laughter. "* And that means...what? Nothing. Looks like our friend's forgotten that there's more to the west than this measly hole." The others on the stage joined in and laughed as well. "* There's another place to the east, not far from here. We done with this place, we jus' go there. And then to the next and then to the next. No matter how far ya go, there's always more to take." Without a word, the two below nodded to each other, and the blacksmith headed into a nearby, empty house with a bag he had on him. "* So's just you then, huh?" Examining the lone warrior below, the leader of the bandits took a few steps to the side. "* You think ya got what it takes to shake down ol' Billy. Eh?" A quick jump later, he was down on the ground, facing off with the other man. They both fixated their gaze on one another. A few controlled breaths, a careful walk towards one another "* From the first time ah saw ye, ah knew it'd come to this." Without further ado, he moved his hand down to his colt to draw his weapon, but before he got anywhere near aiming at the older man in front of him, he already had two bullets in his chest.

"* Now!", the lonely gunslinger shouted, signaling the apprentice that it was time. He grabbed the dying leader, took away his gun and held him in front of himself to intercept any bullets from the now demoralized but angry men above.

With a large, unhandy batch of unwrapped fireworks, the younger man stumbled outside and set them up, pointed at the depot of gunpowder barrels above. Using the leader as a shield, the human gunslinger navigated in his direction. "* Come on! Get a move on!" On his way, he aimed his gun past the leader, pointed at a few of the bandits, more than twenty feet away with his revolver and shot three of them dead with three bullets.

Stressed out by the incoming randomly flying rounds, the blacksmith tried his best to get the fireworks lighted as soon as possible. Which was harder than he thought , but after a few tries, he got it lighted. At once the two of them leaped into the dark, empty shack they were at. Embers strew back into the house and required the gunslinger to get up and put out a little fire. Before he had too much time for that though, a huge explosion from where the stage was, threw him back through the sheer force of pressure and wind it sent in all directions, even into this hideout. Swaths of sand and debris were launched and carried by the short storm that was unleashed. Desperately, the two heroes held out, barely dodging the collapsing ceiling. This was far from over, but from here, all the gunslinger needed to do, was to hurry from cover, shooting down the remaining bandits with his revolver.

* * *

It would have been pretty fun staying there and watching this film enough to see this. Unfortunately, half-way through the film, Mom decided that it was too violent. Frisk had been exposed to enough in the past, so early on, he was dragged out of the cinema. And before much backtalk could be had, they sat in the train straight back home. "* I just don't think a film with so much blood and short-hand use of firearms is appropriate for your age."

"* Mom, I think I'm old enough..."

"* He's right, you know." Mom's face shot to the other side of the alcove of seats they were on, Sal was sitting. Sal, the revived soul of justice, and the one that had chosen this film to watch in the first place, with a little Stetson, a vest, everything to fit the movie's theme. In that moment though, it all seemed pretty awkward, as he caught a deadly glare from Frisk's overprotective mother. "* Sheesh." No words needed to be spoken. She didn't approve of it, full stop. If someone else's mother let their children watch stuff like that, Mom would just look down on their parenting decisions rather than rethink her own. Who knew, in other cases she was probably right to do so. Even so, whether it was just like that, or because of something that happened recently, Mom and Dad were finally on talking terms with each other. He sure could talk Dad into watching this together, if only to celebrate him and Mom working with each other. They spent the entire trip back to the village in silence. He could hear Mom sigh with relief somewhere on the way. Watching over him and Sal was wearing her down. She probably preferred a bit of peace and quiet.

The sun was shining down on the still not dried up streets. For a short time, it had rained a lot more and a lot more strongly than otherwise, and now the clouds were gone for a while. The Builvers hadn't yet arrived to repair the broken windows, porches, and the long, cracked-open road in the middle of the village. A few people had only removed the chunk of earth that had grown out of the road and broken it open. If you counted the parts in that didn't completely cover whatever was under them, it had more than the length of a whole bus. In so many resets, Frisk had never seen Mom do that, but I had assured him, that without question, this was her. This was her with a single swipe of both arms. Without anything announcing or projecting that, Sal sped up to be ahead of the other two for a moment and started making pistol hands. "* Cmon', not so shy, boy! Draw yer gun!" Frisk was about to join in, but checked for a reaction from Mom, and saw her subtle disapproval. Seeing him barely react, Sal stopped and got in line too. They still had time for that when at home.

Sure enough, they arrived at home safe and sound. With their shoes off and everyone away from the small changing room between the front door and the rest of the house, Mom probably could bear a bit of Sal's shenanigans. Whenever they were outside, the constant lookout for both of them was probably taxing her concentration, so she didn't like too much disturbance to her focusing on whatever she was thinking about. She just was like that. Sal had picked up on this too and was already speeding ahead down the hallway to Frisk's room. On the way through the kitchen, he picked up a straw - a regular drinking straw - and put it in the side of his mouth like the gunslinger in the film. "* C'mon, boy! We still got some unfinished business!" He humoured him and followed him. While Toriel called Sal's mom to make sure she knew they were home safe, Frisk disappeared behind his bedroom door and closed it behind him. "* Aww man, what a bummer.", Sal immediately started. "* We missed the best part!" Silently listening to him, Frisk went past him and started getting some toys out of the large box he had in his room. It was filled for the most part with very old toys from Mom's house in the ruins, with a few very fragile new ones from up here. "* You've got to watch it somehow! I was so pumped to watch it together!"

Once Frisk was done putting up a sufficient set of roughly humanoid figurines, he pushed one that roughly looked the part of Sal's apparent favourite silver screen hero in his direction. "* Hey, you can still show me!"

* * *

At the heart of the ruins of a burnt down settlement, the two stood above the soon-to-be corpse of a heavily injured bandit from further south. The yellow-skinned blacksmith watched intently as the heavily annoyed cowboy pushed around the flinching man at his feet. "* You can't move. Not on your own." A clear look at the guy's legs revealed this to be true. Each kneecap had a bullet inside it. "* Tell us where ol' billie's gone, and you might make it out alive!" He turned around to face the rising sun. "* It's gonna be pretty darn hot 'round here pretty darn soon. An' we need ours, so this..." He held up a leather-wrapped canteen and removed the leather that covered it's outside to swing it over his own shoulder. "* ...is the last bit of clean water. Since you know..." He nodded towards the well, with two empty barrels next to it that were full of gunpowder when the two of them arrived. With a more and more serious tone, the gunslinger adjusted the leather on his right shoulder and knelt down to give the bleeding bandit a stern look. "* You're better off telling me."

Breathing heavily, struggling to survive, the guy shifted around to lie on his back. He spat out blood, some of which landed on the impatient ranger's boot. "* Sunnydale! They're gonna..." He coughed up more blood. He was desperately trying to survive those bullets he had taken to the chest. "* Billy made a promise. There's too many of us. You can't stop'im." What little strength he had left, he used to laugh. First gloatingly, then sounding more and more desperate, because of the gunslinger readying the next bullet, bringing the barrel to the bandit's forehead and before the blacksmith could get in the way to intervene, he had pulled the trigger, and their dead foe's head sagged to the side.

The blacksmith, now a bit annoyed, grabbed his friend by the shoulder and pulled at it to get his attention. "* Did you have to kill him?"

The gunslinger gave him a tired look back and snorted, before he spat out his straw. "* Boy, you wanna know how that movie went or not?" Without further ado, he made for their horses to get seated on his. "* Now come on! We gotta ride in the sunrise, take a shortcut through a pair of cliffs, and then get stopped by a landslide."

He was already getting his horse ready to ride out, but the blacksmith dug his foot in. "* Wait, if you already know it's a bad idea, can't we look for a different way? It doesn't need to be by a hair's breadth! Let's play this safe!" The gunslinger wanted to stop him, but it was too late. The blacksmith had rushed to his horse, fetched and put on his apron and was heading for what was left of the one proper wooden shack that was built here and fetched several tools. A solid hammer and a large steel spike. He also brought some pieces of scrap metal and inspected them to sort them out based on some trait. "* There's something I've seen once that we could do to give them a little scare. If I can just..." Beyond any reasonable comprehension of how solid this scrap metal was supposed to be, he used the hammer and the spike to hammer two clear holes into some suitingly large metal plates. "* This should do the trick!"

The gunslinger wasn't so sure about any of this. "* What lil' gimmicks you tinkerin' there anyway? Too late now, we can't take the short way any more."

Finally, the self-satisfied blacksmith came along, handed the gunslinger a poncho to put on for later and attached the metal plates to their horses to allow for them to carry them before he mounted his. It was finally time to ride out. "* Then let's just not take the route we already know is a trap. The safe way is always better." There wasn't much morning left, it was getting hotter and hotter. The vultures were looking pretty hungry. And when riding down a hill, the gunslinger signaled for the two of them to stop, because he could have sworn he had spotted a coyote in the distance. To their dismay though, company was waiting for them at the only watering hole between Sunnydale and where they were. Three bandits with a bandwagon full of more barrels. Judging from the depot they had just destroyed before, more gunpowder. To make sure, the two of them kept their horses bound safely around a corner behind the shadow of a large rock, where any company they'd run into couldn't spot them and - with a good eye on the two relaxing rogues at all times, made their way around them and to the water hole. The blacksmith told the gunslinger that he had another one of his recent, weird plans and brought a long fuse taken out of one of the many bags that hung off his horse. With their guns ready, they made sure always to have the wagon between them and the wagon's owners, until they came close enough. Quickly but quietly, the younger man found a place to put one end of the fuse and brought the rest to a safe distance, before pulling out a match and lighting it.

At once, they ran off to the side, by the time the two clueless bandits got wind of anything happening, the explosion already startled and threw them back. Already dirty from the scattered sand and earth that gathered on your face when you rode out for too long out here, their bodies were slightly blackened and they had debris strewn onto them. Before they could arm or brace themselves, the two heroes were already stumbling them and taking away their firearms. "* End of the line..."

The blacksmith rushed to the gunslinger and pushed down the arm that was pointing a loaded weapon at the head of one of the two bandits. "* Stop! What are they going to do?"

Annoyed, but playing along, the grizzled man shrugged. "* Whatever, have it your way. Now get out of here, you two!" To have a little fun, he did fire at the ground around them, to send the two men, now scared for their lives, dancing and turning trying to run away. With all the speed their horses could muster, they rode away, and the gunslinger didn't lower his gun until they were far enough to be sure they were gone for good. Or at least for until they could regroup with the rest of them at their destination. The same the two of them had, only that they could now water their horses.

Thirsty, and with his canteen running out of water, the blacksmith stepped closer to the water hole, only to be surprised, by an enormous, snow-white goddess, dressed in a deep purple robe, rising from the surprisingly large body of water under rushing and spraying of water. Her thick, floppy ears followed every move of her head and her mere gaze brought hope and happiness to the hearts of anyone it fell upon. At first surprised, she looked down on the two of them. "* Oh, I see the two of you are having a good time. Here, you must be thirsty." The goddess lowered herself and placed a tray with two glasses of fresh, cold water on the desert floor, before she vanished again.

"* Thanks, Mom.", the blacksmith responded, watching her disappear.

Cool and unimpressed, the gunslinger smirked. "* Hm, seems them redskin spirits 're real after all. Well, gift horses an' all." The two of them refilled their canteens and refreshed themselves before they got their horses to drink as well. Much sooner than if they had stuck to the script, they were set and ready to soon arrive in Sunnydale. Sure, the sun took it's toll, and the pinches of hot sand and dust, carried onto them by the wind only made it harder, but restocked on water, they were sure to make it. When the wooden row of houses came into sight, a downright caravan of people fleeing it had come together and was headed away from it. "* Hey!" The gunslinger called out to one man that was sitting on a wagon, encouraging his horses to keep pulling it. "* Hey!" Even when the gunslinger came closer, the stranger didn't stop. "* Gosh darn it! Wait a second!" The man had no intention to stop and wordlessly gave the extravagantly dressed traveler a questioning look. "* Where you all headed?"

"* Away from here. I'm not just sittin' tight in a run-down shack waiting to be blown up. This place is lost!"

Annoyed and disappointed, the gunslinger sighed, backed away and rode back to the blacksmith's side, soon finding himself riding in the exact opposite direction from all the fleeing citizens. "* Guess it's just the two of us then."

The afternoon was ending, the bright light of the midday sun was already fading, and the gusts of sand whirled up by spurting citizens were becoming less visible. But they hadn't ridden through even half of it, before they came across two men, unshaved and unkept, dressed for traveling but with the blue signature scarves ol' Billy's gang always wore. They were greeted at once with a very playful tone. "* Howdy there, looks like we got ourselves some company." In a tired pretense of being impressed he clapped his hands. "* You got some balls comin' all the way here. You really think you've got what it takes to take down our boss?" He proved he wasn't the least bit afraid of the gunslinger by coming not only closer, but only stopping when he was about ten feet away, spreading his arms when he was there. "* He ain't even here yet! He was waitin' for ya at Doom Canyon. Though it's gotta be a matter of time before he realizes you ain't comin. Meanwhile I could..." He was about to reach for his gun, but saw the gunslinger's hands shuffle around under his poncho and figured trying to draw their weapons on each other wasn't such a wise idea. "* ...what's that, friendo? The ole hide-your-hands-and-your-gun-in-a-poncho trick?"

More and more angry at the bandit's complete lack of understanding of the situation he was in, the gunslinger grunted, narrowed his eyes and fixated straight at the eyes of the man before him. "* Listen up, 'friendo', my friend here an' I got two very different ways of goin' about this. You scram now, he gets his way and you guys get outta here alive." He spread out his arms to show he wasn't going to draw his weapon. "* You look for trouble, you pull that gun of yours and put some bullets in my chest. See how that works out for ya. Your choice."

For a moment, everyone was tense and everyone as silent. Then the bandit in front of him turned around to look at his shorter, full-bearded friend. Once they had exchanged looks, he turned around to the gunslinger and burst out in laughter strongly enough to lose his stance and stumble backwards for a second. "* This has gotta be the biggest bluff I've ever heard. Okay, I'm callin' it!" Without the gunslinger or the blacksmith moving an inch, the bandit readied his weapon, pointed straight at the gunslinger's chest, and fired. The shot hit heavily enough to stagger him and make him flinch. "* Woah, still standing. This gon' be fun!" So he shot him in the chest again, and again. Until all his six bullets were gone. After each shot, even after some time to recover, the gunslinger snorted more loudly, until once the sixth bullet was gone, he swiftly reached for his gun and put a bullet in the necks of both bandits before anyone could say or do something. "* Wrong choice." Struggling for dear life and trembling, the previously arrogant man lay on the ground now, and the gunslinger came close to kneel next to him. "* By the way, it's not the ole hide-your-hands-and-your-gun-in-a-poncho-trick." With both hands, he reached under the large piece of clothing, undid the makeshift straps that were holding in place a large metal plate that covered his chest and caught all the bullets and threw it on the ground. "* It's the hide-protection-under-your-poncho-and-bait-your-idiot-opponent-into-wasting-his-ammo-trick."

Now no longer wrinkling his nose, but grinning, he looked back at the blacksmith, who pointed at a bar nearby. "* I think there's some people inside." Already tired out by their journey here, they made their way to the other side to check out the bar. But before they could get near the barely protective doors, a woman with short hair with a similarly non-contemporary dress. "* Woah there."

* * *

"* I heard you two had a pretty good time. Hey, Sal. Time to say goodbye, it's getting late." Hesitant, but obedient, Sal and Frisk said their goodbyes. Sal's mom thanked the two of them to look out for him for the day, and soon, the house was back to the relaxing silence it had when only Frisk and Mom were here. It would have been even better to finish up their story, but Frisk could figure where it was roughly going. When he went back to his room, he could hear Mom sigh with relief. She could probably hear the two of them - with how immensely loud and excited Sal would get with this stuff. If they had talked normally, then she couldn't have heard much, but he got louder and louder, the longer he went on. For a time, Frisk got to join in on reveling in the quiet, until Mom came over to tell him she was picking up some groceries and asking if he needed anything.

The moment she was out of the house, the silence was broken. "* Well he sure loves his cowboys, doesn't he?" He turned around to the flower pot, to see me spring up next to the tulip that was already growing out of it. Gee, how excited he was to crawl up the bed and talk to me, me being here must have meant much to him, even now. "* What do you think about him?", I asked.

He just smiled. "* He's fun. I like seeing someone so invested in something."

If he was happy, I was happy. At least as far as this was possible. "* You know, you should be thankful. You're lucky. Chara would have loved to meet someone like him." As if he could already tell or as if he planned on asking me to go on about this, he sat down cross-legged and with no visible intent to get up too soon.

"* I thought she hated humanity."

He had a good memory, that was for certain. "* Yes, but all this stuff this Sal goes on about. The wild west, riding through the wasteland between towns and settlements, armed and ready to take on anyone that gets in your way, she loved this. It was her only escape. She always told Asriel about this one book she had when she lived at the foot of the mountain. A novel, about similar adventurers to what you two were playing here. And so often, when Asriel and her were among themselves, she'd go on and on about it. She never told much about what the surface was like, but she did say she had always wished she could just be - well - like this. A 'gunslinger', always armed and always with ammo on her, so she could shoot anyone who gave her trouble in the face. Sometimes, they'd even play it out. Made themselves characters of what they'd be like and made up stories of traveling through that same kind of desert, helping Monsters and humans. With her killing anyone that caused any trouble. You've already fought one of those two 'characters'."

Frisk trembled for a moment. Not from being afraid, more from being touched - or sad. "* You mean...at the end, just before the barrier broke."

"* Yes. That. Minus the dark eyes and the black colouring on the cheeks of course. All grown up, with horns and everything, armed with nothing but his chaos sabers and his magic, and dressed in a robe similar to Toriel's, he'd watch over her wherever she went. Swordsman Asriel, they called him. And she, well she didn't have any magic. They imagined her with all the attire she thought fitted. The cowboy hat, the vest, riding boots, brown trousers with suspenders, maybe a scarf to hide her face. Her, they called Desperada Chara." For a moment, my little story was interrupted when an unsettling cold gripped the whole of my stem, and an image flashed up in my mind. An image of Chara, bloated and huge. Giant arms made of twisting human corpses protruded from both sides of her poncho, two similarly enormous human spines, only with a few bits of bleeding flesh hanging off them had burst out of her rounded back and spanned out oversized rips and her eyes and smiling mouth were nowhere to be seen, but replaced with pitch-black, empty cavities.

"* Flowey?" As quickly as this happened, the human's voice snapped me out of it. "* Are you okay?"

I shook it off. It must have been some sort of hiccup of my mind. I guessed anyone would have those after the things I remembered doing. "* Yes. I'm all right. So where was I? Oh right, Desperada Chara. She always had a good and well-kept gun on her, which she used on every opportunity. In fact, she didn't just wait for opportunities, she sought them out. They traveled the desert not just looking for money to be made, Chara wanted her character to do more. Instead, they went on to ask around wherever they went, if there were any troublemakers around. Robbers, bandits, muggers, murderers, even just con men. And often just because she could, she would hunt those troublemakers down and kill every last one of them. Even though Asriel tried to convince her not to, most of the time. That she and Sal shared this interest only makes sense, because somehow, bringing justice in a quick and deadly way was something she always wished she could do."

"* Okay..."

"* She loved it so much, anyone she got really comfortable with, she didn't even greet with a regular 'hello', or 'greetings'. Instead she'd use 'Howdy, Partner' as her everyday greeting. It grew on the others over time, so eventually, Asriel and Asgore started using it as well."

"* So it came from her?"

"* Yes. Didn't it ever strike you as odd? Like something that doesn't really sound like royalty would normally use it?"

"* I guess not." This was more or less the conversation starter for all things Asriel. From time to time, when Toriel wasn't listening, I'd pop up and talk to Frisk about whatever went on in his life, and sometimes I'd tell him more about what it was like in the Underground.


	47. a taxing start

.

The Captain takes Charge

Chapter 04

A taxing start

* * *

The last weeks before the beginning of the semester, Sans spent convincing Papyrus to go shopping for some new outfits. Wearing armor to college classes was gonna weird out his future colleagues. "* Really now?", Alphys hooked in, partly in disbelief but mostly out of curiosity. "* Don't we already look to them like two talking animals and two walking skeletons. If anything will weird them out, it won't be the armor."

Sans shrugged and led his brother outside. "* whatever. always best to be ahead of the trend."

"ABSOLUTELY. FIRST IMPRESSIONS ARE KEY!" Soon after that, the two were gone from their house again.

Once the door was closed, Undyne came closer. "* And where are we going today?"

Alphys got the keys and made for outside. "* We haven't said hi to our neighbours in a while. We could do that for a start. They're going to be our fellow students after all." Alphys walked straight across the street to the other house that fit just as little into the surrounding ones as theirs did. She rang the bell, and after a few moments, the door was opened by a pretty tall green creature who's entire face just consisted of a huge mouth with bigger teeth than Undyne's. "* Hey..."

"* Ah, so it's you. Come on in." Without further ado, he made way for the two to come in. From what it looked like in the messy living room, Big Mouth was watching TV. The house was a lot less toothy on the inside, where fence and a lot of decorative outside structures at the front mimicked Big Mouth's appearance. "* Sam's upstairs." Oh no, please not. Sam was their colleague? Undyne didn't like the thought of hanging out too much with that fat slob.

The staircase was already a lot broader than the round one in their own house. And down the upper hallway, it became obvious why. Behind a wide-open door in an office - no, more like an atelier, the fat, orange dragaroo with an improperly worn hat, dressed in nothing other than a vest, was sitting in front of the computer and reading something aloud with something between shock and disgust. "* And then he does - what? With his what? Ugh, why?"

Not far away from him, the two of them stopped, with Big Mouth heading back downstairs. The doctor nonchalantly pointed at the distracted dragon. "* Yep, that's the guy. He's going to study engineering and be my lab assistant. And be in whatever group or club I join."

Undyne couldn't help but ask. "* What are you even doing?" He had some e-mail or message open and seemed very disturbed by it's contents.

It was only then, that they had his attention. He turned first his head, then he rolled around to face them and put both his index fingers together. "* Oops...hello! Sorry for startling you." He turned around to close it. "* Humans are weird."

Might as well try to befriend him. Maybe even make him a bit more bearable. "* Stop apologizing." Undyne commanded. "* It puts people off." He was most known for his annoying habit of apologizing at every turn, which sometimes got to such extremes, it yielded him the nickname 'So Sorry'.

The dragon scratched the back of his head. "* Okay."

"* What are you working on anyway?" Curious, now that the ice was broken, Alphys walked right up to him, grabbed the increasingly nervous dragaroo's mouse and brought up his currently open art program. She had to further calm him down when he urged her not to do that. "* Just let me...oh god...OH GOD!" Counter to a stranger's expectations, there was more surprise in Alphys' voice than shock or disgust. Quickly, she minimized the rather disturbing drawing she had opened. "* Did you draw that?" He did have all the pads he needed to digitally draw, after all.

More resigned than embarrassed, now that the cat was out of the bag, Sam admitted it. "* Yeah, I just told you. Humans are weird." Undyne caught herself almost mentioning that the image reminded her of a scene from this novel-length Asgore fanfiction Alphys had written, which by then, she had read in full. She had less trouble believing Sam the dragon would draw stuff like this than the reason the two of them came here. She pointed right at him. "* You...Engineering?"

"* Yeah."

"* Really now?"

The Captain pointed at the computer, the easel behind the desk, the draw pads on the desk, all his drawing and colouring equipment. "* What about all that, then?" It seemed like art was much more his cup of tea than the stuff Alphys did.

Sam sat back and took a moment to put his response into words and adjust his hat. "* It's a good hobby, I love it. I can even make some money at the side." She shivered. "* But it doesn't make a living."

"* Not a surface-level of living.", Alphys added. "* Either way, I need an assistant I can trust up here. He was a good choice."

Undyne was a bit annoyed at that. "* What about me? Aren't I trustworthy?"

They had been over this, and the impatient lizard could only repeat what she had come to agree with last time. "* You want to give up your dream and spend your whole life as a lab assistant?" She was surprised at how long the tiderider hesitated before she agreed. "* Thought so. Now I need all of us to exchange phone numbers. Even Big Mouth. A university campus can be chaotic, especially in the coming weeks. We've got to prepare for anything." Who knew, she probably had a point. More contacts being exchanged was always better. Papyrus was always going to stick with Undyne, so there wasn't a lot to worry about him. Neither about Sans.

The following Friday Morning it was time. A humongous crowd had gathered at Shoneon Village's train station. It took getting up extra early and missing one or two trains before there was even space for them to be on their way to Enkate University. And when they arrived, the campus itself was all the more full. It was impossible to navigate, and none of the seven that went there together, were sure whether they would have found their respective destinations without Alphys doing the legwork for them. The lecture halls were so full, swaths of people had to sit on the ground and the stairs. Monsters left and right were surrounded by curious strangers of all kinds and in all the mess, even the skeletons, Alphys and Undyne had trouble finding each other, once the introductory lectures were over. Overwhelmed by the sensory overload of flashing signs, voices and generally people overcrowding the entire area outside, Undyne sat down on a bench around the corner from the building she and Papyrus had just come from. "* Stop, stop, stop!" She pulled the skeleton back and urged him to stop being so excited by pulling him down until he was sitting. "* This is hopeless, we're never going to find the others like this."

She was already getting out her cell phone, when she was startled by Sans' voice coming from only a foot away next to her. He was somehow standing just in the corner of her eye. "* find which others?"

Papyrus must have long gotten used to that and went right out to ask. "SANS, YOU'RE ALREADY FINISHED? WHAT ARE YOU STUDYING ANYWAY? LAZ...LETHAR...LETHARGOLOGY? DOES THAT EXIST?"

"* theoretical physics."

The taller skeleton's eye-sockets narrowed. "THEORETICAL, SO IT ISN'T REAL."

What he said left Sans completely cold though. "* guess you could say that. hey! there are the others!" Lost in staring at her cell phone, but somewhat following a coherent direction, Alphys was leading a group of Monsters consisting of herself, Big Mouth and Sam right their way. "* right over here!"

"* Oh thank goodness!" Upon seeing them, the lizard put down the phone and hasted right over, past another crowd of people that almost cut her off again. "* Phew, we found each other after all." Worrying for seven people was wearing her out. Well never mind, now Undyne was here. "* Okay...uh..." She got so nervous, she consulted the cell phone, just to see what was next on the list. "* Y-yes! The cafeteria. That's on the other side." As it turned out, she indeed didn't mean the little restaurant right in front of the two main buildings, but a bigger one, across the yard behind one of them. A big, blocky concrete building with revolving glass doors.

When they walked across the gravel of the yard at the centre of the campus though, they saw a familiar face. A young man with brown-ish skin and two very short tusks poking out of his mouth. Mesut, the half-Orc was in a heated debate with a few humans, who's choice in clothing Sans recalled from the day when he fought those Centaurs. He was holding a few cheaply printed-out charts in his hands and was pointing at them. "* For the last time, look at the numbers! They're right here!" He pointed at those charts he was holding. He spoke slowly and loudly, as if they had this conversation for quite a while and he was making absolutely sure they couldn't misunderstand a word he said. "* Even human districts struck with poverty have less than a tenth of the Orcish crime rate! So stop with this 'mitigating factor' nonsense. It isn't about poverty. The homicide rate is growing with every Orc that comes here. They are murdering everyone that's here and they're doing it because they know they are beyond reproach. We need to start revoking citizenship and deporting them!"

Two humans in particular, a woman and a very effeminate man in women's clothing were so appalled by what they heard, they needed to take a step back, because shrugging together wasn't enough to express their shock. "* How dare you! Don't you know you're an Orc, too?"

The woman bounced off him and added her own two cents: "* Yeah, why don't we deport you first?"

The Monsters were just passing them, but Alphys had to stop when she saw Mesut fuming with rage. She tried to call out to him to get him to stop. But she didn't get herself to call for him loudly enough. The slightly trembling half-Orc started shouting right at their faces with wide, cutting gestures: "* Because - human - I am not a criminal!" She tried again, but she just wasn't nearly insistent enough. "* I am not looting any stores and I am not murdering people! How is this so hard to understand?" When Alphys trying twice wasn't enough, Undyne stepped forward, placed two fingers in her mouth and gave the angered half-breed a distinct and unmistakable whistle. Not the least bit soothed, he just turned around to her and didn't hold back the slightest. "* What?"

They stared back and forth, until the doctor took it up on herself, walked over to him, and started slightly pushing him away from those humans. "* Come on, there's no point."

For a moment, he gave her a very angry stare. Then he closed his eyes, took a deep breath and sighed, before he started moving along and following her to the Monsters. "* Humans are frustrating, you know that?"

"* I know." Slowly but surely, he calmed down as all of them went to have some lunch. Mesut had a point though. There were so many Orcs here, and so many Monsters were walking around without her or someone else watching over them. Alphys really hoped what happened on their last two encounters with Orcs was enough to scare them away from getting any ideas. Without further interruptions, they went on to the cafeteria, where their surroundings were just as crowded as the areas around the lecture halls moments after they came out of those, only that the crowds didn't disperse, they had to stay huddled together in claustrophobia-inducing crowds, waiting in sometimes quickly, sometimes not so quickly moving queues to get to the self-service area. With a few non-humans mixed in here and there, more humans than ever introduced themselves to them. Most people from the surface looked like humans but with different eyes, slightly different proportions and different skin complexions. Having crassly different appearances the way the Monsters had, was in and of itself a conversation starter. In case of some Monsters that Alphys observed from a distance, like the bunny that used to run the shop at Snowdin, the humans practically tripped over themselves to get to know them.

She did what she could - and succeeded - at getting her little group to stick together and not let themselves be drawn apart by short attention spans. Expecting that the other Monsters might not all figure it out immediately, Alphys showed them how to pay for their food with their student ID, and they soon found themselves sitting together at one of the bigger tables and getting carried away by their foods and whatever topics of discussion they came up with. Even Alphys ended up caught in a heated discussion with her half-human friend, but their topic had skipped from politics to fiction. "* No! You can't do that!", she practically shouted. "* That's so cringy!"

Mesut sat back on his bench, relaxed and unimpressed. "* Yep. No exception." He shook his head. "* I have an author avatar character of some sort in every story or campaign I put together. Every. Last. One." Most of the Monsters around had no idea what exactly they were talking about, but could only guess the rough course from the reactions that currently involved Alphys leaning on the table, shaking her head and covering her face with her claws. "* Every last one of them. I'm not saying you have to break the story with it. You don't need to make them take over the story and become a new main character. Maybe keep them a minor side character who only appears three of four times in the whole of it, and maybe have him play a supporting role at one point. Once. That's all you need."

"* But then, how do you make sure it doesn't disrupt the..." Alphys was about to continue this debate that only the two of them cared about.

Undyne picked up the first occasion she found to interrupt them. "* Hey! What are those guys doing?" She pointed to a corner on the other side of the cafeteria, where a few of the older students that they recognized from their introductory classes. They were pushing tables and chairs aside and under flinches and the sounds and tells of heavy lifting, were carrying a pretty big special table up the stairs with a flat, white surface attached atop two metal bars on both sides of it. "* Hey, you there!" The captain got the attention of one student she recalled from promoting some dubious student program in front of her and Papyrus. "* What're you guys up to?"

The student that came along, a guy about her height - pretty tall for a human, with short brown hair and wearing a short-sleeved summer shirt, which was pretty messy with visible spots of fat covering it's front. And she soon saw why. Picked up from trays rolled along on a cart, the organizers unloaded countless plates of freshly prepared fast food on a few singled-out tables. "* So!" The big guy from before stood up on a chair and clapped his hands to get the attention of everyone around. "* You guys get ready, 'cause it's time for the food stuffin' station!" He announced the upcoming event like a sports commentator. "* To get you guys started for college life, we got a bunch of stations for new guys to visit. Hey you!" He pointed at Big Mouth, who sat a few tables further along the window. "* You look like you could do with a meal or two!" Big mouth questioningly pointed at himself, but it was easy to see why that human would think that way. After all, the now more interested Monster's entire profile from the shoulder upwards consisted of nothing other than a huge mouth. It was enough of a miracle that people around weren't screaming and fleeing at his mere sight.

Soon enough, the students gathered together a few volunteers of several kinds, one of which remained Big Mouth, one of which was Sans, who had joined him. They were to sit at the special tables, the previously blank sign above now had a cardboard sign shoddily taped onto it reading "* Foodstuff-Off". They soon enough figured that it was an eating contest and that in rows of five, plates of fast food were taken from the rolling trays they brought them on and placed one in front of each contestant. A sinking feeling ran down Alphys' back when the two Monsters got to devouring their hamburgers as quickly as the other three contestants. Just as fast as the dishes vanished, the organizers counted how many had been eaten by whom and replaced the plates to make sure every contestant had something served at all times. She was relieved when Sans stopped, sat back and pushed away his plate, one Orc and Big Mouth kept going.

They went on and on, stuffing burger after burger down their gullets. A crowd of freshmen had gathered around their table and cheered on their last two contestants. The Monsters were already getting worried, when Big Mouth stared at his replaced plate and the cheerful air of the hall had quickly taken a turn for the dark when Big Mouth started choking and coughing. "* Quick! Get out of the way!", Undyne shouted while she stormed straight to the table. All the humans got out of the way immediately. Only the Orc took some pushing aside until she and the others could reach their helpless friend. His body was twitching. He was in a heavy condition. Life-threatening. He even drifted apart for a brief moment and only pulled himself back together at the last moment. "* He needs to get to a hospital!"

"* right!" Sans went ahead and grabbed the barely breathing Monster. "* i'll take him there."

"* Stop!"

Alphys grabbed him by the arm. "* A normal one won't do!"

"* no worries, i know a shortcut to an underground one." Before anyone could say anything to object, the short skeleton had already carried the man twice his size around the corner into the bathroom. Several others tried to stop him and tell him that he was running into a dead end, but when they arrived, he was already gone.

Silence filled the room. No-one knew what was going on. After a minute, a very relieved skeleton came back from the same dead end he had vanished into and rubbed some sweat off his forehead. "* phew! didn't think he was gonna make it."

"* Where'd he go?"

"* How did you do that?"

"* There's a way to the Underground here?"

Monsters and humans alike were as surprised as they were confused. Mesut pushed his way towards him to ask him directly. "* So there's a way where?"

Sans smoothly walked back to the table to pick up his own tray and place it in the shelf with all the empty ones. Big Mouth wasn't all over the hill yet and it was probably better if they made their way to the Underground to check out his condition and give him some company. No-one around felt like lunch any more. All seven of them left with their trays put away and their good mood all gone. Without paying it much thought, they made for the train station to head straight back to Shoneon Village. On the way, but not before everyone was already seated down and the train had locked it's doors and left, did anyone speak up. But by that point, they did. "* Uhm..." Alphys faced the opposite corner of the alcove she was sitting it, to address Mesut, who was still with them. "* Why are you here?"

He smiled. "* To see if your friend is okay. Also, I've never been to the Underground before. About time I got to see it, too." He kept smiling, but started to take the hint from their worried looks. "* Wait, is that a problem? You're letting Monsters walk around up here where anything could happen to them - not to mention the O- shady people. Not to mention the shady people everywhere around." He figured that it was better to stay vague, with an easily provoked Orc sitting only a few benches further down the wagon. "* Either way, you all walk around up here without a worry in the world, and when I come along, you're skeptical?"

The lizard's eyes narrowed. "* Fair enough." He had a point after all. They were a bit careless in that regard. The Underground was open at all times, often unguarded at that. Anyone could march in and likely stay unnoticed. There were enough Orcs on campus and in the foreigner's district so many of them often shopped in, to have to stay alert at all times. The most likely reasons why nothing had happened was nothing other than those Orcs being terrified of drawing Asgore's attention and that Monsters enjoyed the same special non-human status that placed them above the law. They simply figured that they had to take some risks if they wanted to get to live up here.

It had a strange feeling to it, seeing the overcrowded and extremely busy campus just before, and the calm of the village meeting them as if it was any holiday like before. Day-light cycles were something everyone had to get used to up here. The streets of New Home, stuck somewhere between the nineteenth and twentieth century, were always illuminated in the bright lights, both from the street lamps and higher up across the cave it was carved into, submerging it in this even-evened out grey that never ended when you looked upon it from the king's bridges. The Monsters that stepped and trotted back and forth here though had gotten used to being connected to the surface. Apart from the occasional glance, the group that wandered along the walkways wasn't too conspicuous to anyone used to passing by Monsters of all kinds.

The hospital in New Home that Sans led everyone to, was as busy as any hospital would be. The walls were a bit dirty, since Monsters weren't susceptible to most contagions, but apart from that, it's interior looked like a very conscious approximation to what human hospitals looked like. And eventually, they wound up filling a sick wing with the toothy creature lying unconscious in a bed. Makeshift monitoring equipment was hooked up to him, along with a shining, blue crystal. "* What's that?", Mesut pointed at it and asked as soon as the nurse left.

"* An arcane crystal. We do that to keep Monsters alive when they're in trouble."

"* Wait, what does it do?"

* * *

"I know that the two of you are well aware of it and surely know it off by heart. But just for Papyrus, I am going to repeat this. Take a good look at this! This is the magic of arcane crystals."

"ARCANE CRYSTALS?"

"Arcane crystals. A utensil that has been in Monsters' usage for a long, long time now. Very useful in hospitals and wherever Monsters in critical, life-threatening conditions are to be found. Arcane Crystals emit a constant stream of magical energy. When wrapped in a repelling material and connected to a Monster's body, the stream is channeled into their body, circulated throughout it like an electric conduit, and can serve to maintain their body. Their soul can be weakened by outside circumstances, the pressure of maintaining a body with a sudden and excessive input of high-mass food or a more illness- or poison-related condition can overwhelm their soul for some time, their body and soul could sustain severe damage from attacks or accidents, but an Arcane crystal is powerful enough to keep their bodies alive, even if their soul gave in completely. Not that it does, but it's strong enough that it could accomplish that. It is mostly used to keep Monsters alive under conditions that they could otherwise not live through.

The problems of arcane crystals arise, when people start using them for other reasons and for other purposes. What is powerful enough to save lives, is also powerful enough to take them. Not all Monsters are nice, and some might use them to enhance their magic abilities. Even some forms of Temy Armor use arcane crystals to magnify the magic attacks of their wearers. Luckily, anywhere near the entrance to the Underground, they are only ever used in hospitals though. At the time, finding out that the enemy was using just that would have been useful to identify her. You would have had something indicating that you were dealing with someone who had long experience living among Monsters. That would have given you a different angle to pinpoint what was happening and prevent it before you needed to rely on help you hadn't accounted for. So even on this front, what ended up happening was in part plain luck."

* * *

Savoring his impending victory, the fierce Garganneth practically danced with his giant form in all of his crassly coloured, rubbery glory. The never-changing, drawn-looking grin was moving about all the more lively as he laughed. "* Ha, ha! What do you hope to do now, armored drivers?" He mockingly pointed at the people on the ground to his feet, each dressed in an elegant but tight monocoloured suit, each with a different colour and with biker helmets, designed to aesthetically match with the rest of their suits. "* With this form, even your Unite Mech isn't strong enough to defeat me!"

"* No!" The red armoured driver shouted. To compensate for the lack of mimics that came with no-one being able to see his face through the black visor of his helmet, he made exaggerated demonstrative gestures to accompany everything he said. "* We will find a way to stop you! Even in the face of hopelessness, we will carve a path to victory!" He proceeded to address the other Drivers. "* Call your vehicles!"

In an often replayed sequence, five different models of cars materialized out of nowhere, rode across the extraterrestrial wasteland they were trapped on and made their way to the drivers to open their doors for their respective drivers. Thankfully, the fierce Gargannoth patiently waited for them to get ready. Once they were, all five of them hit the gas and went for a simultaneous collision with the giant that was still big enough for the vehicles to only get to his knees in height. Gargannoth knelt down with one leg and with a single swipe of his claw, he sent the drivers screaming and the cars flying back, flipped over and onto the ground. "* Pathetic! Are you trying to tickle me?"

From within his signature car, the red driver pointed to the sky and called onto his followers. "* Drivers Assemble!" In sync, the others responded "* Yes sir!", one after the other. In another often-seen sequence, all five vehicles began to flat and change. Some drew in or folded away their wheels, one folded up it's entire trunk including the wheels to become the front of a mechanical torso, with it's blue trunk making up it's back. The red SUV folded parts of it over to reveal a 'face' and be placed at the top, making it the head of a giant, humanoid mech built entirely out of cars. Now somehow all in a single cockpit all of a sudden, the five drivers made a simultaneous gesture to announce: "* Assembly Complete!"

Still confident, the giant ahead of them, at all times seen only from a frog perspective, taunted them and waved at them to come his way. "* Go ahead! Give it your best shot!" Another rehearsed move on the part of the drives later the now rather organically moving metal structure started to launch and prepare masses of weapon systems, spread across all the front of their Unite Mech. Lasers charged themselves, hatches on both arms opened to deploy missiles and drew a long, blue-shining sword. It swang around the sword in the air and every slice left behind a blue band of light, which traveled straight to the mech's foe, where it collided, exploded and vanished as if nothing had happened. In fact, everything they threw at him ended with him laughing. Even when all the smoke had dispersed, the giant in front of them turned out to be completely unscathed. "* Your strongest attack didn't work on me! What are you going to do now?"

The green driver was the first to panic. "* How can this be! We've got nothing left. What're we going to do now?"

The red driver attempted to calm him down. "* I don't know yet! We need a new plan." Suddenly, with dread in his voice, it burst out of him. "* Oh no! I will have to do it! I will have to use - that - power!"

The yellow driver pushed him back. "* Wait! You can't be serious! There's got to be another way!"

"* There is!" With a shift in the background music, from a grim moment of silence to fanfares announcing their rescue, an unexpected but familiar voice shouted: "* You were right, drivers!" It was the grey driver, the lone wolf who headed their way in his very own, black spaceship the size of their entire unite mech. "* I don't need to bear the burden of responsibility on my own! Not if I can have friends who have my back!"

"* Grey!"

"* You're back!"

"* Thank god!"

"* Wait!", the red driver interrupted. "* Even our mechs' attacks are too weak!" He pointed at the giant, who was staying idle and intently waiting for them to get ready for their next attempt at beating him. "* Even if together, what are we going to do?"

The grey driver was a lot more confident. "* Don't worry about that! Just follow my lead! Mechs Unite!" What followed was - finally - an unprecedented transformation sequence where the black spaceship disassembled itself into multiple parts, all of which added themselves onto the more colourful mech as additional pieces of armour, upgrades to it's main laser cannon and enhancements to it's other weapon systems. When it was done, the grey driver announced the result of it. "* Behold!" One more time, this new form was visible in all it's glory. "* Unite Mech: Enhanced Mode!"

Startled and confused by this turn of events, Garganneth the not-so-fierce-anymore stumbled back and even his face, usually locked in a smile, was swapped for a scared one. "* Impossible! How can this happen?"

"* Your ranks are hollow, Garganneth!", the red driver began shouting. "* You think working together and hierarchies require fear, thus you were abandoned when you thought you had a safe victory!" The almost motionless alien twitched a few times while he listened. "* But you're wrong! You can listen and work together as friends! Friendship and loyalty bring true power! We made a new friend and now we have a newfound power! Enhanced Union Beam!" After one more synchronous motion of pointing forward from all drivers, the improved and more impressive-looking beam weapon attached to the mech's right arm started charging it's power.

Scared, terrified, but somehow with no intention of attacking or running away, Garganneth started shambling about in place. The grunty voice was now screeching in fear. "* No! Please! This can't be happening!" When the beam finally fired, it's blinding burst was so powerful, it caused a visible shockwave to spread out and expand around the end of it's 'barrel'. Slowly, gradually, their screaming enemy evaporated under the fire of the ceaseless, ear-shattering, white ray that he was barraged with, until when it died down, nothing was left but his smoking boots, leaving the relieved drivers alone to give each other celebratory high fives.

* * *

After a few moments of silence upon seeing this low-budget action series end, Frisk asked more with confusion in his voice than awe. "* What was that?"

He was talking to me. Frisk had brought in one of the pots from Asgore's glass house just one door away, so I could pop up next to a healthy and bright-shining lily. "* I think it's a new series of a show we had in the Underground, too. Some VHS cassettes with old episode of it were found in the dump, long ago. That's where I know it from."

"* Okay." Frisk needed some time to process both what he had seen and what had confused him. In the end, he got the first question that came to mind pinpointed."* So why do they always announce their new forms like that?"

"* That's easy.", I answered. "* I would have done that too, if I were them. If you get that kind of power, you will want to gloat. Really show off that new look, maybe give it a name so you can show it off and draw attention to it."

"* Wait, you didn't do that when you were really big."

"* I..." I saw what he did there and stayed silent for a few moments to remind him that I didn't like it. "* Asriel didn't do that because he didn't think he'd need to. But if you really want a name for it, call it Delta Rune Asriel. Fits with the crest and all."

"* So the big one is called 'Delta Rune Asriel', and the grown one 'Swordsman Asriel'..."

"* Yes?"

"* Then which one is the 'absolute god of hyperdeath'?"

Startled at the mention of these words, I stared at him for a while. "* Wait." This made no sense to me. "* He never mentioned that. Where'd you get that description?"

But from his surprised expression, I could tell he didn't know what to answer wither. "* I uh...I don't even know. I just sort of knew you - he was called that."

This had me more worried. "* You have to think about this a bit more. Where did you hear it?"

Now more and more nervous and befuddled, he went on. "* I don't know, I just gave him a look and somehow knew." He stopped. He stopped because after he had shaken his head at my further inquiry, I was gone. Which to him - out of habit - meant that 'Dad' was coming home. And within a second, he could hear the key turning and Asgore come in with groceries for him to help put where they belonged.

The absolute god of hyperdeath. A title and description that worried me. It worried me, because Asriel had never written it down anywhere, and neither had I. It was a stupid little name and the only person to ever hear it, was the same person to tell him never to use it, lest he embarrassed himself beyond redemption. And she was right. That person was Chara. How in the world had Frisk known those words? In hindsight, I should have taken the hint. If I could somehow come back from the dead, even if only as a flower, so could she.

The next thing for me to do took a little patience. I headed over to Toriel's house. Now that it had been a long while, since they were all freed, it was time to get myself an estimate. I could never really know, but there were signs that looked like while things did appear a lot better, no-one involved was really content.

* * *

The weather hung heavily over everyone. At least over the night, the pressure let up and it rained. Toriel had long turned off most of the lights and was settled down on her comfy chair to read a repetitive, mass-written crime novel one of the human mothers had recommended to her. She was slightly unsettled when she heard a bit of a thunder in the distance. She was more unsettled when she started hearing a faint, but continuous knocking on the glass door to her greenhouse. The only way inside there was from within the house. How could someone be there? She got up immediately, put the book aside, and one of her hands was already charging fire to use in case it was an intruder. When she got closer to that door though, she was surprised not to find anyone. At least at first. The knocking wasn't the nearby tree, and the thunder was still too far away to be it. The knocking wasn't far away, it really came from the door. Only when she looked down to the floor, did she notice the culprit. Out of one of the many flowerpots filling the entire area of the greenhouse, both on the floor and on the tables that lined the walls, there was a single flower that hadn't wilted completely. It was a golden flower from the fields below the cliffs that hadn't been there before and which moved all on it's own. A troubled face lay between the petals and I didn't seem to like what I was doing, but I kept doing it. I was banging my face against the Boss-Monster-fitted windowpane, until she finally came along to open the door.

The fire didn't vanish from her hand. She glared down at me, with a mix of anger and uncertainty. "* I know you." The last real time she had seen me, I was trying to kill Frisk, so her reaction was understandable if his life had any meaning to her.

As soon as she arrived and threatened me, I cowered down as far as my stem allowed. "* Gee, I'm not attacking anyone. Put that fire away."

She didn't put that fire away. "* What do you want?"

I paused and looked all around the greenhouse. It lay out in the open but was directly connected to the house. There were glass walls isolating them from outside, but you could see the stars if and when there were any to see. It had been built here with intent for her to use it, but every single plant and flower here - all of them - all the tulips, all the lilies, all the dandelions - she had even planted some radish and potatoes, but everything here was dead. The only thing alive here was me, and that was no thanks to her. Once I had looked over the dead plants for long enough to draw her attention to them, too, I faced her. "* Why would you bother to plant a flower if you aren't going to do what it takes to keep it alive?"

The fire vanished and her face softened up. "* I didn't..." It was the same spiel here as it was Underground. She had an entire greenhouse's worth of plants - she had carried and placed all the pots here with her own hands - and never watered a single one. The two of us spent some more time staring at the brittle leaves that hung over their respective pots. It was so full of pots with dead plants, she could barely step anywhere without stepping on one. And Asgore had the same high-grade kitchen she had, meant to be used for more sophisticated cooking and baking, and he used it for nothing more than cooking or frying meat and cutting and washing vegetables in the most basic ways. In each house, you could tell that one of the two was missing, and it was almost like they both made conscious efforts to give that impression. Having the size and facilities for both, but one of them missing made each of their two houses feel...half-empty.

Before she found the words to say much more, I went on. "* So life is looking up, eh? Looks like that school of yours is happening, the child's doing well, everything is looking up. But something is off." I looked back up at her. "* Are you really happy? I'm not sure if it feels like it. I want to hear it from you." I fixed her gaze. A short flash of lightning from the distance announced an oncoming thunder. The rain shattering against the glass roof was incredibly loud in here. "* Look me in the eye and tell me yourself. Do you really feel happy? Truly happy?"

At this point she had picked up the pace. "* Of course. I would not want anything another way."

She was smiling down at me. At least until she saw the corners of my mouth drop. "* I see." I retreated into the earth of that pot and vanished without another word. She wasn't happy. Not really. I knew her better than that. I had spent enough time with her that I could read her like an open book. And this wasn't her truly content smile. I hadn't seen that one in a long, long time. The last time I had seen it, I wasn't a flower to begin with. I wanted to see it again. I thought things looking up this way would bring it back. But it didn't. The two of them weren't really happy. Not even like this.

Especially not like this.


	48. Amiss

.

The Captain takes Charge

Chapter 05

Amiss

* * *

She should have listened. All this time, over all these months, she only pretended to and never tried to wrap her mind around any of the stuff that Alphys was constantly talking about. Composite factor fiat currency here, fractional reserve banking there, the important thing was her voice, but whatever subject matter she was on about never meant anything to Undyne. She must have noticed that it was important. She could have told from how her stammering was coming back, how she obsessed over this more than a lot of other things. Now it was too late. Alphys was gone.

It started on a Monday evening, just a week after their first week in the university's semester. Alphys had come home earlier than her, because she had slacked off at the wrong moment and only caught a slot for one subject's mandatory practise that took all the way until eight o'clock. She came back home to find Alphys sitting downstairs in her chair, trembling, chewing her claws and studying some very long document. "* O-oh. You're h-here!"

Undyne wrapped her arms around the chair and leaned her head against it's side. "* What's wrong this time?"

"* It's th-the M-m-mmayor." Before she could get anywhere description-wise, the doctor minimized the legal document and went back to opening a video. "* I b-bbetter show it."

When she hit the play button, the video opened up with an animated logo. It displayed one of the leading architects that Undyne recognized from the builder crews that built their village and repaired it after two Boss Monsters damaged a lot of buildings overnight. Next to him stood a few humans in suits, two of which held small stacks of paper, one page on which Undyne recognized from Alphys scrolling past just before. They were standing in front of a white wall covered in a slew of blue corporate logos and in the centre of the footage, smiling to the camera like the others, now with her hair open, cut to neck length and dyed brown, stood Jaclyn Wimble, the mayor of Enkate City.

"* Greetings. I am Jaclyn Wimble, your valued mayor, your pillar of progress. And I have wonderful news. A little over three months ago, we were overjoyed to welcome a new race to improve our culture and bring more variety to life in Enkate City. And sure enough, as all branches of progress intersect, welcoming Monsters into our midst has brought us a new opportunity to press forward in the area of reforming our power generation and moving towards a new age of renewable energy." The mayor paused to turn around, while everyone else stood aside to make way for the camera to see what she was looking at. Jaclyn grabbed the 'wall' behind them, rolled it forward and pulled off the apparent plane of cloth that covered it to reveal it to be a large map. Once the map was revealed, the others came closer again, as far as they could without covering the map. It illustrated - as it's title implied - the vicinity of Enkate City, with ten symbols depicting a strange building or industrial facility. The people in suits gave the audience a few seconds to give it all a quick look, before the mayor continued her announcement opening up with the title. "* The Clean Power Project marks our next step towards a new age of green energy. Combining the incredible abilities of Monster construction teams and the materials, blueprints, equipment and modern technology we can provide, the preparation and construction of ten new, federally-funded power plants has begun to bring us forward. Now that all deals are sealed and done amending and the contracts are set in stone, we can finally unveil it to our beloved citizens. The Clean Power Project was made possible by..." She went on to start rattling down the names of firms and foundations that helped sponsor and secure funding for the project.

After a few names, Alphys skipped on the footage to the point where the mayor was done and played it again when the mayor resumed speaking about the project. "* Press speakers and top ranking construction staff will hold a public event for you!" As though rehearsed, everyone pointed to the camera, some strongly, some only briefly. "* For you to get first insights on our course and to find out what you can do to make our city greener." The rest of the video was only a page with several kinds of contact information and lists of social media accounts being displayed for such a long time, it left to question whether the people that made this video were even aware that you could just stop videos.

Dumbstruck, Undyne stared at Alphys and awaited until this neurotic lizard met her annoyed look. "* Really?", she asked. "* This got you so worked up?"

"* Yes!" Completely convinced that this panic was appropriate, she closed the video and opened up various graphs and tables that had been compiled about the project. "* Look!" They referred to Enkate City's power supply in the event of possible outages, as well as the new plants' output in comparison to the city's consumption. "* No-no-no." She paused. "* None of these plants are necessary. Even if someone took out the three closest plants, the city would still have power. And not just that!" She opened a set of humongous infographics with photos from the construction sites and core components of different other previously constructed generators for reference. "* We already know what kind of plants they're building! There's only two - this one works with water and that one runs on wind energy, but all the others run on coal or atomic power! They're advertising it as a major green project, but that's a lie!"

Undyne covered her face and groaned. "* So they did some false advertising, so what?"

With a more cutting motion, Alphys turned around, now with some more defensive body language. "* Aren't you the least bit worried? We have all the power we need! What are they going to build that is so big, it takes ten more plants? This isn't something that is being done at that scale just like that!" But her scream met deaf ears. Ears that were already leaving the basement. This all sounded too silly and insignificant to the Captain. She humoured Alphys' obsessions with all the stuff that was apparently wrong with the surface, but in the end, it didn't matter to her.

She wished it had.

For the time being at least, she was still here. Hours later, when the two of them had calmed down, Undyne decided to talk it out. When she came downstairs, Alphys had left her 'office' and was over at the manga shelves, sitting in a comfy chair. She stood there for quite a while, wondering how long it took for the doctor to notice her. She wasn't nearly as worked up any more. She was sitting there, calm and relaxed, re-reading one volume of her complete - but surprisingly short - collection of Mew Mew Kissy Cutie. She always did this. She was smart. Really smart. Smarter than any of the humans up here. But even she had her limits. Whenever there was some problem, some issue that was bugging her, that she couldn't figure out, she would come here. And re-read those same manga she had already read, over and over again. He had re-read them so many times, she could recite most of them completely off by heart. Maybe even all of them. She just read them to clear her mind. Undyne knew all this. And that was why she also knew what Alphys was thinking. "* Still bothered about this power plant thing?" She turned around, eyes only half-open. 'What do you care?' She didn't say that. Not aloud at least. Her eyes did. Undyne sighed and folded up her arms. "* Look, I'm sorry, okay? I just...I think you're overreacting to this a bit." No answer.

They stared at each other for quite some time. Eventually, Alphys did speak up. "* I'm going to that public event. With or without you." This was all that was said that day. Undyne was sure of how it would go. That event would go by, and the world would continue as it had before. She didn't care to accompany Alphys. That was a mistake.

The day came, and Alphys gathered up a team of highly qualified specialists in the field of her surface hobby. And 'qualified specialists' in this case meant Sam the obese dragon, and Mesut the not-nearly-so-obese-but-still-a-bit-overweight half-breed. They took the time off to go to the event. And that was that. Undyne came home from her mandatory training, and found the house empty. 'Never mind', she thought. The event probably only took a little longer than she had expected it to. It took a lot longer than she expected it to. She called the doctor on the phone. She didn't pick up. She didn't have the patience to wait for public transport to get her there. She went straight to the skeletons to ask Papyrus to take her there. Papyrus picked up on her worry and Sans came along for the ride, too. A depressing silence hung over them, as they rode through the dark. The square in front of the city hall was empty. The public event was long over. And nothing was to be heard, either. People did walk along the streets in the distance, all minding their own business. Occasionally, they got some disapproving looks from driving a car on a square, but that was the closest to any attention that strangers here paid to them.

"* She's not here." She got out to wander around. "* Alphys?" Aimlessly. "* Alphys!" She found herself heading closer and closer up the stairs to the city hall. The doors were locked and the lights out. It had long been closed. There was nothing here. Everyone who had attended was long gone. Even most of the trash the crowd had left behind was picked up, you could barely notice anything had happened, except for a stage still being set up on the stairs. Where was she? "* Hey, you!" Undyne found a little branch of a fast food chain, where people in work uniforms were still making food and selling it to bypassers. "* This big event today! Did they all go somewhere?"

The man behind the counter, mostly busy sorting burgers, turned around with little involvement. "* It ended hours ago."

"* I mean did they move it? Is there a tour? A parade? Anything?"

"* No, it just disbanded. So you ordering or what?" Alphys was god-knows-where and this guy was asking her to order fast food.

"* i'm having a number eight with ketchup." Upon appearing next to her without her noticing, Sans dismantled any further trouble and had the guy sell him one of the unused burgers in the shelf.

Since her approaching these guys wasn't gonna cause any trouble any more, Sans set off to wait until Undyne wasn't watching again, and speed-search the area once he could. Teleported and ran across all the roads and little street corners, scouring all the open area. Nothing. Undyne was constantly calling Alphys, so there wasn't a point to him doing it. Better save up on those batteries, so they could call with his phone, when Undyne was done depleting hers. There was nothing on the streets. He even asked some strangers if they had seen someone matching Alphys' description or that of the two that went with her. They were all random passers-by, most of which weren't even there for the event. No-one had seen them. He eventually accepted that they weren't on the street. But he didn't need to limit his search to the streets either. He could take the direct approach. Zapped his way into the Underground, into the lab and to the little headquarter Alphys had set up to assist him when he fought crime at night. Her main computer needed booting, but it worked perfectly fine. She had most related applications set up to be opened up and ready to use with a few clicks. One of which tracked her cell phone. All he needed to do, was to grab the corresponding system off his bike and bring it back to where Papyrus had parked. Now with some more direction, he shortcutted his way through the walls. For brief moments, he looked inside buildings. He did it extremely quickly. If anyone was inside, they wouldn't notice. Most of the buildings here were empty. The inside consisted of closed offices, garages and storage halls. Once he had an idea where there were people, and where he could take a second to look around, he got to doing that. He zapped himself into one building, took a second to give the room he arrived in a quick look, and then went for the next.

And then there it was. He had to move back by one, because he was too quick to move on, but he got there. The buzzing of a cell phone. The buzzing that came from a very concerned fish calling over and over again. It was an abandoned manufacturing hall. Not far away from here, and on ground level. Long wooden tables with unused tools lined up most of the area, rotten and decayed from remaining untouched for as long as they were. In hall hung a mist of long-festering dirt and the dust of wood shavings. In a clean rubbish bin in a corner, next to one of the crumbling working tables at the wall, rang the cell phone with a photo of everyone at their table, from one of their Friday get-togethers. Alphys' phone. All the more of a shock to him, he saw that half-Orc she had been here with. At the edge of the tables, towards the area set for vehicles to drive in and out. He was seated leaning against the rotting table with his head sagged to the side. Blood had spilled out from his cut-open neck and made a large puddle all around him.

Before Undyne knew what was happening to her, he brought her right here. She was at a loss for words and wandered right to the trash can. "* Alphys?" She mumbled with a shaky moment, assuming the worst. She was a bit relieved to find nothing other than the phone. "* No. No! What happened?" She knew how to unlock it, and flipped through the images in hopes of finding anything. Sans looked around in the area. The floor -even down here - was made of some bendable, but solid material. On the way to the garage door aside from the manufacturing area, lay wet tracks. A car was here, had driven in during the rain and left later. Sure, Undyne assumed the worst. But he had trouble believing the worst. Why would the worst happen here and now. And if it did, wouldn't there be a pile of dust? A lab coat? Anything? He went back to Mesut's body and took a moment to examine the surroundings and try to get an idea of what happened. This was an abandoned manufacturing hall, probably for carpentry judging by the saws and plates of wood. Locked to the outside, so Alphys and the other two couldn't get in if they wanted to. Yet here one of them was.

They must have been brought here against their will. Sans knelt down beside the lifeless half-breed and examined him. His wounds consisted of several clearly targeted cuts. Whoever did it, wanted to make sure he was dead, and wanted it to happen fast, possibly fast enough for him to not be able to scream, assuming he was gagged and at a risk of removing it. He was the only one here though. Right opposite from where Mesut sat, lay the tracks of whatever vehicle once was here. Possibly, they were kept here to verify who they were, or make sure of some other factors being the way whoever killed him needed them to be, then they took out the guy they didn't need - him - and brought the other two to the vehicle and left. Not that long ago at that. It wasn't Friday yet. Frisk hadn't SAVEd. If he found out something had happened to Alphys, he'd LOAD immediately. He had to use the time they had, to find more clues on what happened to her, so he could prevent it next time.

Sans was able to do this pretty fast, and only when he was done, did Undyne fall onto her knees. "* Oh no. Please." She flipped through everything on the phone she could, again and again. And tried the same with Sam's phone to. "* Please. This can't be happening." Her voice was rarely this broken. Her voice was never this broken. "* No...no there's...Alphys?" She got up to run over to the garage door. "* Alphys!" She was about to brute force the automatic garage doors. Sans luckily reached for her hand and pulled her back to get her to snap out of this trance.

"* stop! you can't do that!"

She glared back at him with the look of a person willing to kill anyone who got in her way. "* I am NOT accepting this. She's got to be alive! We've got to find her."

Displaying more and more of his possible strength, Sans kept her in place. "* so what if we go out there and draw attention? so what if we get the cops involved, they come here, find a dead body and the first people they find at the scene is us. we can't make much noise now. no calling for help, no search parties, no cops. we've gotta lay low." She hadn't processed that Alphys was gone yet. If she had opened that garage door and screamed around in the night with people watching, people would know that she had been here. Trying to tell the police that they found him that way wasn't gonna fly very well. Undyne retreated into a corner and broke down. She was making assumptions. Her world must have been collapsing. Sans had to put whatever time they had to use. He took one more look at where Mesut lay. If his assessment was correct, they were all sitting here. The Monsters were stripped of anything that was deemed easy to track and taken away. He took a moment to follow another dot on his device. It only led him to a public rubbish bin though. Another tracking device that Alphys had had on her. Probably out of paranoia. They must have found it while they were taking her away.

From the very moment he found this cell phone, his mind had switched. He had to go about this cold and systematically. There would always be time to process things emotionally later. Back in the abandoned hall, it was time to figure out the questions. 'Where' would be a conclusion from the other ones. The more apparent ones were the 'who' and the 'why'. If they got rid of trackable devices, especially ones smaller than the tip of a finger like the one in that trashcan, they knew what they were doing. They were either professionals or had done this for a long time. The 'why' could have been a whole range of things, but this narrowed down the 'who'. Mesut was something he could rule out. That guy was an Orc, but if he was the kinda guy that purposefully led the other two into whatever happened, they coulda relied on his malice being consistent and him not singing. So they coulda afforded to let him live. But they didn't. Besides, Alphys was the one that brought up and suggested going to this event in the first place.

Whoever did it, knew they were going to be here. And Alphys was the one that brought them here, so this was about her. They knew the mayor's grand event to market her green power initiative would draw Alphys here. Otherwise they woulda picked a different occasion and a different place to do this. So whoever did this either had access to all of her online activity or knew her personally. He thought of the mayor for a moment, since extreme violent actions did fit her profile, but he was left without a motive and she didn't know Alphys personally either. He also considered this being a coincidence. What if it could have been any person - or any Monster? Then again, why Alphys? Why not any Monster then? It wasn't impossible, just unlikely.

Then, as soon as he stopped looking for details on Mesut's person, he noticed a little irregularity. There was something very small, unnoticeable for a regular human eye, in his pocket. A very flattened out piece of paper. "* hey, come over here."

Undyne was long kneeling on the ground, mumbling to herself that this couldn't be, and that she must have still been alive. Which was possible. But whether or not she was, this was important. Because this piece of paper was written on from top to bottom. Barely legible, but recognizable beyond any doubt, to be her handwriting. "* VCPPL 3/15/12/2/2, 6/33/09/1/1, 8/46/02/6/2"* , it was just a folded-together, long set of strings of letters and numbers. Nothing that made sense at first. Some kind of coding at first sight. But not much of a coding that made much sense to him. Still in tears, Undyne grabbed it and held it close to her gills to smell it. The waterworks were still running and she kept sniffing every half minute or so, but it did calm her down a bit. He was careful not to let it be too close to her. Whatever was written here musta been important one way or another. If it got wet and the contents completely illegible, it would be lost. But if whoever did this was well-connected enough to have Alphys' internet history - whoever would willingly look at that - typing it off on his phone was dangerous, too.

There wasn't much more to find here. All he could do, was wait until Undyne had calmed down enough to be able to head back. He just had to wait out her shaky laments, her repetitions of how this couldn't be real, how Alphys still had to be around. Followed more and more often by her telling herself, that there had to be something they could do. For now, there wasn't much. Sans could move around faster than Undyne could imagine, but you could be as fast as you wanted and that was still useless, if you didn't know where to go. And eventually, she was ready. He took her back outside, and onto the square, where Papyrus was waiting intently. Sans was partly relieved that they were out of here. Finding out what happened here and preventing it before it does woulda been a bit harder, if it involved explaining to the police how they had gotten here, and how they didn't kill Mesut and dump him in that building.

Papyrus wasn't in an overly good mood to begin with, and he only grew all the more concerned, when he saw the look on their faces. They were silent on the way home. Completely silent. His brother knew not to ask what had happened. They simply dropped Undyne off in front of her house. It had started to rain in the meantime. And even once the skeletons were gone, she stared up at the height of the big, empty house before her, in the rain. Her clothes got wet and she couldn't be bothered to care. She just kept staring, empty-eyed. Hoping that this was all just a bad dream. Hoping she would soon wake up, get up, meet Alphys in the kitchen or the dining room, and go about a regular day as usual. She didn't wake up. This wasn't a dream. This was really happening. She did lock the door, but she didn't do more with the paper other than to place it on a nightstand in her bed upstairs. She tried to sleep. She couldn't sleep. It wasn't the pattering of the rain against the eyes of the fish that the house's design depicted.

It was that piece of paper she kept staring at. It was all the thoughts she associated with it. What could she have done differently? What could she have done to not let this happen? It wouldn't have happened if she had convinced her not to go. She knew it was a bad idea, but she only thought it was a waste of time. She should have just come with her. Maybe endured this for a few hours, and then she would still have her. Maybe she would have been there to stop whatever happened. Or if she wasn't so dismissive earlier on. If she had calmed Alphys down long before she started obsessing over this energy deal as much as she did. Anything to not let this happen. Anything. She clenched her eyes shut and begged - prayed - one more time for none of this to be real. But it was. She hadn't payed attention to any of it, and now it had taken her everything.

She should have listened. All this time, over all these months, she only pretended to and never tried to wrap her mind around any of the stuff that Alphys was constantly talking about. Composite factor fiat currency here, fractional reserve banking there, the important thing was her voice, but whatever subject matter she was on about never meant anything to Undyne. She must have noticed that it was important. She could have told from how her stammering was coming back, how she obsessed over this more than a lot of other things. Now it was too late. Alphys was gone.

She managed to sleep eventually, but a rumbling from a nearby door woke her up, she woke up in Alphys' bed. The smell must have led her here. But being led here was meaningless.

* * *

Sans had as much trouble sleeping here as the fish that this affected the most. He had questions of his own that filled his mind. The big questions. The questions you could only answer in the here and now, not what-ifs. What-ifs were useful in their case, but not until Frisk got involved. Whoever did this had no qualms with it being found out that they had done it. If Alphys and Sam had been gone for the sake of removing evidence, Mesut would have been gone, too. But again, he was dead. His death ruled out a lot of things. So they weren't gone to destroy evidence. Deducing by process elimination, they must have been abducted. Either to extort something out of anyone that she mattered to, or for some other reason. Was this about trafficking? Was this something similar to that pizza parlour that led him back to the Centaurs? And then some sick bastard would purchase them to do who-knew-what with them? Come to think of it, with how far Alphys was gone in some respects, chances were she wouldn't be opposed to whatever that entailed. But that again wasn't likely. Why her then? Why not just any Monster? Why not just any Brainlizard? There had to be more chubby, yellow Brainlizards. If not already up here, then in the Underground.

But it wasn't just any Monster that was abducted. It was Alphys. Their Alphys. Friend of Asgore, skeletons and Frisk Alphys. Royal 'Head of Research' Alphys. Someone that was - at least among people that knew her - well-respected. If this was about who she was, someone would only go for her if they wanted to get to himself, Asgore and the others. But who specifically? The name Rosenberg crossed his mind. The Centaurs mentioned her. Shortly after he dealt with those, the Dreemurrs seemed to have trouble that involved that name as well. But this couldn't be this Rosenberg lady getting at him, the whole Centaur thing was over a month ago, and he had been fighting crime almost every night ever since. If it was this Rosenberg lady, the timing made no sense.

He lay on his side, watching the water run down the outside of his window. Who was either well-connected, or knew her personally? Mettaton wouldn't have committed a murder, just to get a hold of her, and Frisk's murderous days were over. Sans checked on that regularly. What was he missing? Time passed, with him not checking how much did. He just lay there in the depressing silence, the rain pressing down on everyone with no end in sight. The only light in the room being the display of an alarm clock Papyrus had bought him as a 'birthday present'. As more and more time passed, he found himself turning to it and staring at the light. For a good half hour at that. And even after that, he only stopped because something changed. Like any old digital watch, the alarm clock's display consisted of seven little lights to display one bright lime bar on each digit, and the selection of which ones were lit determined which digit was shown. But the lamps started going willy-nilly. Flickering on and off randomly, displaying random digits, and sometimes in combinations that didn't make for digits. And after a few seconds, they came to a stop, but at a setting that was far from the current time. The first digit came to a stop at a '5'. The second one ended on an '8', but with the bottom light off, making it look more like an 'A'. The third digit only the bottom and top left lights and the top one were on. What was that? A 'T'? The fourth one was a '4'. 5AT4? SATA? Like a kind of port's for computers? The display went back into randomizing it's lights, and came to a halt on a new setup. The last two digits and the '5' from before. 'T45'. This seemed a bit too distinct for it to settle on random digits, especially if it reused the same ones. Did it somehow belong together? Was it a way of chaining it? 5AT45? All of a sudden, it struck him. It wasn't a 'T4', that wasn't a 'T' with it's left side cut off. The digits were matched together. They made an 'N', as far as the display allowed. And it soon corrected itself to confirm his suspicion. One last setup appeared. The first and last digits were a '5', the second the 'A' from before, the third consisted only of the bottom left, the bottom right and the middle light being on. 5An5. Sans. The display spelled out his name.

"* Doc?" He sprang up, unlocked his door, zapped down the stairs and turned on the television. As expected, no news program, no cartoons, nothing. Not even really nothing. Static. The same static that appeared on all displays, but only did so once before. "* Doc! Is that you?"

Then came the ear-shattering buzzing and the sounds of an old modem. Mixed with torn sound-bits of the Doc's voice, and ragged, black letters appearing on the screen. Only five of them though. All in Wingdings, just like how the Doc communicated to him last time. " Manga." The message swam around on the screen for a few moments. " Read the manga." What manga? He was about to ask this loudly, but the lights stopped flickering, and the television returned to a teleshopping channel that was one that ran cartoons in the day. This was it. This was all of the Doc's message.

"* read the manga...", he whispered.

* * *

Ages passed. Or at least they felt like ages. Undyne lay in bed, trembling. Crying. Overthinking every variant of everything she could do, or could have done about this. Why was this even happening? Why now? Why at all? Alphys didn't do anything to anyone. How did she deserve this? Whoever was responsible, she could gouge their eyes out and their bodies would look like cheese with how many holes she was going to put in them. She didn't know at the time, how much this thought would hold true.

"* hey there. can't sleep either?" She didn't care enough to be shocked at Sans showing up. So what if their door was open? She didn't answer. She only shook her head without even lifting it off Alphys' cushion. "* i got a question to ask." Without beating around the bush much, Sans walked closer and sat down next to her bed. "* so humour me here. say if hypothetically - uh...let's say a ghost was sending us messages to help us, and he said to 'read the manga', would that mean anything?" From how invoking ghosts when they didn't know whether Alphys was dead or alive, only caused her to turn around, he realized that he should have worded that differently. "* i'm not talking actual ghosts, just...does that mean anything to you?"

A few moments of silence passed. "* Shove off." She gave it to him straight. "* Go away." For a second there, the light in his eyes faded. She just wanted to be left alone to sulk. Sans had nothing to work with here. Without another word, he got up and headed back to the staircase. "* And close the door behind you!" He was gone for good after that. Undyne was finally left to herself again. The nerve of this guy, just barging in like that. There was one point he had though. She couldn't sleep. Lying in bed like this wasn't going to change that. She groaned and forced herself back up. Trying to sleep wasn't going to do any good. She didn't know why she listened to those skeletons though. If they hadn't been there to tell her again and again not to do that on their way back, she'd be out there now. Skimming and searching every street. Searching the outside and inside any building she came across. But in the end, they were right. If Alphys was taken, she wasn't going to be taken somewhere outside where everyone could see she was held against her will.

Causing much of a ruckus would have drawn attention and made her the prime suspect once police got involved. Looking for Alphys would have gotten much harder, if she had to do it from behind bars. Without much direction, she wandered along the halls of the basement, and back upstairs to the dining room. That message was all Alphys had left behind. A lot more calm than when they first found the place it was at, she sat down at the table and gave it a closer look. She didn't notice anything in particular though. It was written on from both sides. Why this? There had to be some reason. Alphys had pocket dimensions in her pockets. She could fit anything in them. Given the chance, she could have pulled out anything from small electronics to full-sized cameras. She knew all the applications off by heart well enough, she could have texted or posted something online with a phone. But she went for a piece of paper and folded it together until it was tiny and barely noticeable.

On both sides, the entire difference she could make out, was that all intervals of characters were numerical digits, except the very first one on one of the pages. The first one consisted of letters. 'VCPPL'. Detective stories. She used to be good with this stuff, when she was younger. But those were just restored board game trash from humans. There was no way this worked a similar way. Among numbers, if you considered all the singular digits and pairs of digits as one digit or number each, so long as they weren't separated by a comma, you came up with the same number of digits on every single interval.

Before thinking any further, she got up to fetch her phone from upstairs, prepared some tea in the kitchen, and got some stuff to write on the table. A simple number-to-letter conversion didn't yield anything sensible. She tried simply deciphering it by displacing the corresponding letters in the order she did it in. When that didn't work for several attempts, between which she could quickly look through whether some of the variants she hadn't tried would work, she fetched a calculator. The numbers never reached outside of a certain range. Maybe different positions were to be deciphered in different ways. The second number didn't seem to have a limit to how far it could go. It's range was in the dozens. The later ones, not so much. She tried pinpointing the highest number on each position, and tried multiplying the numbers on all other positions on every interval by what she got when she divided the highest second number by the highest number on their respective position and tried different iterations of that, rounding different digits up and down each time. Nothing. No 90s child detective novels could help her through this.

Completely exhausted from four hours of non-stop deciphering and a lack of sleep, she sat at the table with her head long resting on the glossed-over wood, surrounded by used and torn-off sheets of paper, an almost used-up block, a calculator she had long thrown aside, and a plate of used-up teabags. Nothing worked. This had to be some kind of message, but nothing she did yielded any coherent words. Before long, her eyes closed and the next time she opened them, several hours had passed. She had passed out from exhaustion. Not for long, but enough to feel a bit recuperated. Someone was knocking on the door. She ignored it. It was getting morning and it was either the skeletons, or the skeletons had told others and it was them and the Dreemurrs.

Either way, she couldn't be bothered with company. Company wouldn't bring Alphys back. What it was time to do either way, was to pick up the phone and call the police. She told them all she had to. That Alphys had gone, where she had gone and that she hadn't come back since. She didn't have to fake any shaky voices or the like. That all came naturally. She had to sit back and rethink. Nothing she did out of impulse could solve this message. She picked it up and headed back to the basement. She had to profile. If she was Alphys, what would she think what would she do? Undyne wandered back and forth along the spiral-shaped hallway, past all the open doors. If she was Alphys, this was where she would feel safe. She walked past the office with the computer, the table as usual covered in packages of fatty foods. Here, she would interface with the outside world. For one, because she was a bit scared of the hasty, unclear movements of the city's streets. For the other, because she could reach more people and had access to more information operating from multiple tabs and several screens and with every subject she wanted to look for information about, being only a few hits on a keyboard and a mouseclick away. The bedroom, at the centre of it, she genuinely only used to sleep.

But between all the rooms connected only through doors was one that wasn't. On the lengthy outer part of the hallway, was their little library, now with shelves towering high along every wall that openly branched into this room from the hallway, with no walls to separate it. Two comfy chairs were facing a set of smaller shelves filled with manga. Undyne sat down on one of them to put herself in Alphys' position. She always told her that whenever she couldn't figure out a problem of any sort, this would be where she went. Looking around from within the chair, there it was, the thing she always said she did. Right in front of her, whether she sat on one of the two chairs or the other, was the small shelf dedicated only to the comparably short Mew Mew Kissy Cutie manga series. Every single volume of which she had collected a brand new copy, not long after the two of them had settled down here.

She was never really into manga. Anime she really liked, but even though Alphys insisted that you weren't doing it right unless you at least read the manga of whatever shows you liked, especially as some shows were altered, cut short or filled to the brink with fillers, especially the more commonly read ones. And the 'real real' version was always the manga. But the black and white images with no sound or animation didn't make it half as entertaining to her. Either way, she bent forward to pick up one of those volumes. They were smooth paperbacks with nicely drawn cover art. Alphys was very protective about those, since at least to Undyne, it seemed physically impossible to open them without putting folds into the cover. Alphys though never had a problem reading them without leaving behind a trace that she did.

She mumbled the designation at the beginning of a chapter in the middle of it. "* Volume 8, Chapter 48: Swirly Wings..." Swirly Wings. Something seemed familiar about this. No, not Swirly Wings. She froze up, to stay still and think. Her eyes ran up and down the text fields edited into being extremely narrow and disrupting the process of reading them fluently, to fit into speech bubbles designed for vertically ordered text. She recognized the scene she read. She was made to watch it in colour and animation in the past. But save for it being a different medium, it was the exact same scene word by word, shot by shot. Was it the scene, was that the thing that was getting her worked up? No, it was something else. If there was a chapter 48 in the middle of volume 8, there was a chapter 46 in volume 8, too! And there was! She jumped and picked up the piece of paper again. She had stared at it so much, she had memorized most of the contents. The third interval of numbers matched this. At least the first two parts of it did. 8/46.

This was far-fetched, and she was guessing it wasn't going to lead anywhere, but she had spent hours over hours investigating avenues that didn't lead anywhere, she was willing to try anything at this point. Volume 46 Chapter 8. VC. Like the first two digits in the first interval. Maybe the first interval was an index or a key for all the others. VCPPL. Volume, Chapter, P...Page - it was! Volume, Chapter, Page, Panel, Line. Line must have stood for the lines the characters had, and thus the speech bubble. But even if that was the case, those ranged from single words, to containing several entire sentences. So she tried for the very first thing that came to mind. The letters in the index were the first letters of each word describing what they referred to. Maybe the first-letter approach applied here, too. She stormed upstairs with this one manga and the paper in her hand. It was a coded message after all! And now, she knew how to solve it.

The knocking was back. It was Papyrus. She could hear it from the way his mitts softened up his knocks. She tried to ignore it, carefully carrying up more volumes and placing them on the table. When she was about to go downstairs to get the rest, she stopped. "* Screw it." She stormed over to the door, opened it and stared her concerned friend right in the face. "* You know what? Come in! Both of you!" What the two of them found, seeing her for the first time since last night, was a sight to behold. Tear sacs hung off her eyes, and the dark rings spoke of someone who had spent an entire night with a worrying obsession. "* Jackets! Vests, armor, take anything off that's wet! And don't touch anything!"

" EVEN THE..."

"* Yes!" She caught herself screaming for a moment while the brothers were still closing the door behind them. Then she stormed down to fetch the last load of volumes, no longer caring much for their integrity. The covers had gotten a lot of folds from her already, and even if that was so much of an issue, they could just get new ones, right? What mattered was the content. With only shirts on, the skeletons followed her into the dining room. Despite being large enough to fit food, dishes and everything else for her and Alphys, the skeletons, Frisk AND the two large boss monsters, the entirety of the table was covered in various paperwork, some of it failed attempts at deciphering the message with strikes in the dark, some of it manga, now barely recognizable from the flawless paperbacks in Alphys' shelf.

Once the door was closed, she continued, still involuntarily screaming half-way. "* Ninjas! It's like in that anime with the ninjas! It's the manga! It was the manga the whole time!" Papyrus was about to hook in to try to talk her out of this, but Sans gestured him not to, so they instead only looked over her shoulder. In front of her, she had a block on it's last few pages and she spent most of the time looking for a specific volume of the many strewn around across this table. "* Volume 12 Chapter..." She fetched one from the opposite corner, opened it up and noted down: "* t...Chestert..."

" CHESTERT?"

"* sounds like a name."

"* Shut up!" She was trying to focus, to avoid making a mistake here. Every letter she wrote down, she double- and triple checked before writing it down a second and third time, to make sure she got it absolutely right. Silently, the skeletons watched. And slowly, but surely, Undyne put the entire message together. It had some complications later on, because numbers within the message were taken from actual full words, not the first letters like in the entire rest of the message. "* Chesterton Avenue 45 Ms Rosenberg - It's done!"

" AVENUE! SOUNDS LIKE AN ADDRESS."

"* rosenberg. that name rings a bell." Without anyone noticing, but with everyone expecting it, Sans vanished.

Without further ado, Undyne got up, tore off a part of the block that contained one copy of the deciphered message and grabbed Papyrus by the wrist. "* We have an address! Let's go!"

" OW, OW, OW - WAIT!" There was no time for him to interject. With the superhuman force she could bring out with ease, she pulled him out of her house, gave him a moment, launched him into his car which was parked right in front of her house, and threw in his mitts and chestguard, too.

She was so excited, she almost forgot to lock the front door, but soon after that, got in next to Papyrus. "* Hit the gas!"

" BUT WHAT ABOUT SA..."

"* i'm here." He was right behind them in the car. Undyne hadn't seen him get in, but there he was.

"* As I said! Hit the gas!"

"OKAY, OKAY!"

Faster than they did most of the time, they left straight for the roadway out of the village and towards the city. With little experience and thus stumbling while doing so the first time Undyne dialed the address on a navigation app on her cell phone and gave the scared skeleton directions on where to go. "* so, uh..." Upon speaking up, Sans was met with a very frantic glare from the secured but crazy-looking fish. "* uh, what do we do if it's some place we can't go in? like a home, or a closed store or something?"

"* It's past morning. Whatever it is, it will be open." She turned around. "* Otherwise I will make it open." The address didn't actually lead them into the city, but to an industrial district. At least it looked like one from the distance. More close-up, a lot of the factory halls were empty and open to the outside. Some of them were covered in graffiti, people could be seen sitting around, and Sans was certain he saw someone shoot up some heroin up his veins. This once was an industrial district, but something happened to it. The exact street and number left them parked in front of a restaurant, that probably served the people that worked here, before these factory halls were emptied out and left to become drug dens. 'Meteor Ching Chong', was the name of the restaurant. Undyne didn't hesitate for a second to get out and head to the front door.

It was indeed closed. Sans knew, because in those few minutes it took for Undyne to decide to head off and forcibly get Papyrus to start the car, Sans had headed over to check. He knew what was ahead. Undyne knocked on the door several times. Nothing happened. There was a buzzer, but pressing it didn't make any sound. She looked around one more time to see if there were witnesses, there were none, and then spun around, kicked the door in and headed inside. Behind the dust from a broken wooden door, lay a dark corridor with ceramic walls aligned in a black-white square pattern. "* Hello! Come out here, I know someone's there!" There was nobody there. "* Come on!" They checked the kitchen, the bathrooms, the stairs up. There were entire apartments worth of rooms up here, windows barred and the rooms directly connected to the abandoned restaurant through a 'staff only' door, but those didn't seem like they were used for cooking or cleaning. They were empty. "* Come on, there's got to be somebody here! Anywhere! Anyone!" The more they had searched and found nothing, the more agitated she became. "* This has got to be the place! The number matched, the street name matched! Alphys!"

A stingy mix of different smells, some of which was human sweat, the apartments, so much it was like you could see a veil of it hang over the place everywhere. The walls were dirty, here an there the carpet floor had small stains of blood. Pieces of rope and questionable 'gags' lay on the floor in some corners. But the closets were empty, any drawers that were here were empty, Undyne even checked the cupboard behind the mirror. "* Alphys! Alphys! Nononononono! No!" Out of sheer frustration, her body acted on it's own and with one punch, she crushed the flimsily put-together wooden cupboard completely. "* Alphys! Where are you?" He had more or less expected this. He had been here already. "* No! It can't be! This has got to be it! She must have left some sort of clue!" Her voice didn't lose any of it's strength, but she was trembling more and more, and you could hear it. "* More thorough, Papyrus! Search the corners!"

The more crazy she sounded, the more scared Papyrus got, but it wasn't like there wasn't a reason for either. They did search the corners. All of them. All the corners in every room. The heating, the sinks, broom closets, even the toilets. Sans could figure why. If the tracking device in her lab coat was disposed of, they probably got rid of her lab coat altogether, just to be sure. Which meant unless she found some here, she didn't have a pen and paper to write on. Sans thought about that situation. He pictured it in regards to what Alphys had available. The smell was undeniable. Alphys wasn't alone here. This was probably similar to the centaurs and what business they had. They mentioned 'Mrs.. Rosenberg', too. Could they all be the same one? That same Valerie Rosenberg, who likened Sans' nightly crime busting activities to killing millions of people in a war, could she be the same one the centaurs mentioned, and the same one Alphys referred to on her message?

Either way, Alphys' methods were probably limited. She couldn't keep writing text messages on paper if they didn't let them. The only thing Sans could rely on her having, was her body. And with it, her magic. Lightning magic, unless she learned some real spellcasting. But any message she left behind, she would have had to leave behind in a way that they wouldn't recognize, otherwise it would become useless. If she had burnt a message on the walls with lightning, whoever took her would have seen it and so would they. What would she have had access to from most places here, even if she was immobilized? When it occurred to him, he hopped up and down one more time in place. "* carpet floor."

"* Carpet floor!" Upon hearing it, Undyne didn't so much as ask, she got right to it, but not the way Sans implied. Instead of looking for some loose part of it that came off, she managed to fidget out a piece of it that was already coming off, and tore it all out, along the wall, went on and on wherever she went. Sans sincerely hoped there was nobody nearby, as this made a lot of noise. With the help of the skeletons, she tore them off completely. One piece after the other. Each room had one, and the corridor that connected them. In one in the corner of this entire doorless area, they actually found what they were looking for. Beneath the carpet floor, probably burnt faintly enough not to be visible from the surface, were indeed messages written in several parts of it. They were mirror-reversed, but they were there. "* Mort", "* Clear instructions" and "* they need me" with the 'me' underscored several times. From the weird slip at the end of it, it looked like she was interrupted while writing it. And even though the different way of writing it made the cues a little more subtle, Undyne recognized it. "* Yes! Her handwriting! It's her! She's alive!"


	49. A Determined Foe

.

The Captain takes Charge

Chapter 06

A Determined Foe

* * *

They found another message. Several of them. And they were from Alphys. Of one of them, they all hoped it was an attempt at writing the address she was headed to. "* Mort" Then there was the most notable one. "* they need **me**." They needed Alphys. It could mean several things, but all of them included her being alive. If she was held for ransom or to blackmail them, you can't hold someone's life as leverage, if that person isn't alive. If they needed her for her knowledge, or to get anything on Asgore, they needed her alive to extract any information they needed. Nonetheless, Sans made an excuse to walk around a corner, zap his way back to the village and into the Underground, back to Alphys' 'sidekick' console. It was still running. And had maps open to track the tracking devices. All he had to do here, was to search. 'Mort' might have been all the hints he needed. He typed in Mort, and stopped. He had an idea. A common denominator. He used an operator to prevent the program from searching for an exact match for what he typed afterwards, and then used a key word to look for something that shared that common denominator both with the centaurs' collecting place, and that of that restaurant they had just been at. "* pizza."

Mortimer Road 37. Another closed Meteor Ching Chong branch. They sure had a lot of those. He had to memorize that name and look up all the branches they had another time. He didn't head back to Papyrus and Undyne. He didn't want to give those guys the time that would have meant. He prepared the location on his phone to quickly find it when he went there, and shortcutted his way back up and to the address. It must have looked bizarre to onlookers, seeing only a brief blip of him in the middle of the air, half the time with his head pointing to the ground. He arrived pretty quickly. It wasn't that far away from where Undyne and Papyrus were. But unfortunately, even getting there ahead of when he expected anyone to realistically arrive by regular means, didn't help. He knew immediately, because on the door, exactly in front of the place he was headed to, just as dusty, just as dirty, was a new and clean piece of paper stuck to the door's glass window with sticky tape. With a pen, someone had written in large letters: "* I don't think so, Sans." He swallowed. For once, a cold grip took hold of him, the way he didn't believe much up here could. His name. Someone expected him here. Whoever wrote this, knew about Alphys sending them messages. It didn't mean they knew how, only that they knew that she did. But the more concerning bit was that whoever wrote this, knew that Sans would arrive here first, and was confident about that.

Why did this upset him so much more than what was already happening? No, upsetting wasn't the right way of putting it. Unsettling. It was unsettling to him. Someone involved with taking Alphys knew not only who was looking for her, but in which order they'd arrive on each step of this scavenger hunt they were on. He wasn't expected the culprits sending a direct message, and even if they did, not to him, and even if they did to him, then at least addressed to the 'Blue Blitz', not calling him by his name. Somebody knew him, and knew that he was fast. Very fast. Either way, he couldn't do much about that. He looked around to see if there was anyone nearby who may have been here for a while and seen whoever put up this message, but there was no luck to be had there. So all he could do was make the best of what this person gave him. He grabbed the sheet and very carefully, shortcutted his way a lot more slowly back to the Underground, to make sure nothing touched that sticky tape. Back in the true lab, he had the assembly chamber produce him a plastic bag to place it in, and stored it in Alphys' personal storage room. A room formerly used to filtrate and prepare food for artificial Monsters. Now filled with junk Alphys had the assembly chamber make for forensics equipment in hopes that it helped with crime fighting. Too bad now that they were actually facing off with one of the more major criminals again, she wasn't here to use any of it. Well, at least she made it. Spared him some effort, maybe.

"* Where were you?" Back at the place the other two were at, they were understandably upset that he had vanished.

"* been checking something out, but it led to a dead end." One thing he noticed when they were already on the way out, was that Undyne had gone out of her way to carve out the parts of the carpet floor that contained messages, and was bringing them over to Papyrus' car. During the entire trip, Undyne kept repeating and mumbling all three, to memorize them. She had come to the same conclusion as Sans regarding whether or not Alphys was alive. He was already thinking about what they would do if the police were there when they arrived with those rags. But in the middle of their trip back, he found himself back at Undyne and Alphys' house from one moment to the next. Everyone was here, having a good time around him. It was like the world was slowing down. In fact, it was, he subconsciously had his body speed up. Undyne was here without a worry in the world as was Papyrus and this time, so was Alphys. Even Asgore and Toriel were getting along better and better. But this time, Sans wasn't as relaxed. And neither was Frisk. He remembered the very conversation he had slipped back into. It was last Friday evening again. Alphys was making a joke that Frisk was supposed to laugh about, but the kid sat there staring at the food. He musta LOADED back time shortly after finding out that Alphys was gone. It wasn't like Sans didn't expect him to do that, but he would have liked a little more time to get a bit further ahead with finding out what was going on.

Nevertheless, it wasn't like he hadn't already found out something. He just had to remember all he had collected. He closed his eyes and repeated all of it in his head. Chesterton Avenue 45, Mortimer road 37, Rosenberg, they need **me** , Clear Instructions. The last thing was the location of that empty manufacturing hall, but he would find it if he looked for it. All he could do for now was to urge the kid to smile, and continue with the evening as if nothing had happened. Predictably, the kid ended up first asking Alphys not to go to that public event that was coming up and when that didn't work, asking Sans to go there with her.

He didn't have to tell him twice. Sans laughed, ruffled his hair, and told him not to worry about it. He stayed vague in what he said. He was never sure whether the kid figured it out or not. There was no need to tell him anything. He remembered the last timeline just fine. His first attempt at this was asking to come with her himself, but Toriel said no to that. She didn't see a reason for that. All this business with preventing horrible things from happening and past timelines was an entire dimension to everyday life that Toriel was oblivious to.

The event itself wasn't that big a deal. It was just a panel of suits sitting on chairs on a stage, surrounded by microphones and reporters asking them gratuitous questions the wording of which sounded more like they were setups for compliments and advertising for this entire thing. It was the same as the video Alphys showed him on the way there. One guy from the builder crew, the mayor, and a few suits. It turned out to him, they had been building all these plants for quite some time, it was only now, that they were past the stage where they could count on every construction firm involved, to throw money at keeping the project going, should they lose public support for it for some reason. He caught Alphys attempting to raise her hand to ask a question, and quickly pulled it back down. If it had to do with this energy deal, her drawing attention and asking uncomfortable questions mighta had something to do with her disappearing. She was pretty mad at him for shutting her down like this. Understandable, but he didn't think he had much of a choice there.

Generally, she seemed to be on to him from the start. Sans regularly looked around to sneak a glance of whoever might be following them. He sped himself up to increase the chances of nobody noticing. That didn't work. And at least on the street and in public transport, he spotted nobody following them around. Weirdly enough though, the entire ordeal went through without anything major happening. No assailants jumping out of corners, no-one pulling out a weapon on them, he stayed alert for hours. When the half-breed left them without bleeding to death like in the last timeline, he started to doubt it would be happening at all. When they were taking a detour through the village, parting ways from the fat dragon, he was pretty certain it wasn't going to happen. He was wondering why they were taking a detour, wandering along an entire arc at the outside ends of Shoneon village.

It was here, that Alphys finally broke this silence between them, that had been building up in the course of several hours of him watching her back, and her catching on more and more. "* So...uhm."

"* yea?"

"* Sans, you are being strange."

He shrugged. "* dunno what ya mean."

"* Why are you here with me?"

"* felt like keeping up with politics."

"* No, you didn't, you never do. That's a lie."

"* yea, might be on to something there."

"* Were you thinking we were being chased? Y-you were being strange since last Friday. W-w-wait. Did he turn back..."

"* yup."

Her claws started covering her face and she stopped walking. The tension behind her nervousness was unloading as panic. "* Oh god. Oh g-g-god. Something happened! I died, didn't I? A car crash or someone killed me, that's why you're staying so close to me all the time! Please, tell me there's a way to save me!" It got so far, she was grabbing him by his shirt.

He slowly pulled off those claws. "* hey, hey, calm down. it's already over."

"* But what is, Sans!" She was getting louder and louder. When she feared for her life, any of her usual angstiness was gone immediately. "* What is over? What happened?"

Sans had the two of them turn round, so they could take another round along the outskirts of the village to have time to talk about this. Far enough on the very outside road to not have any unwanted listeners, and dark enough for the two of them to relax. Half of all they saw were one row of buildings, open fields of various, shrinking usage and the dark sky, covered in clouds. He took his time to calmly and slowly describe to her what had happened. Including the messages future-that-never-was-Alphys had sent them. He hoped she would immediately know the culprit, but it turned out she was as much in the dark about that as he was.

Once she was at home, that was one issue dealt with for the time being. They skipped out on crime-fighting that night. And the next morning, even before anyone got ready to head out for classes, he visited her during that one hour she spent surfing before heading upstairs to get ready to go to the campus. This time, Alphys was the one that hadn't slept all night. Whenever you visited Alphys and saw what she was doing on the computer, you could read her mood simply off the amount of tabs she had open at the time. It was a manageable amount when she was relaxed and had things worked out. But this was one of those times where the tab bars were pressed together to occupy the minimal amount of space and still had a multifold of the total screens' length.

"* way to overdo it. you've gotta let it go."

"* I can't! I have to know who 'needs' me! Why do they need me? What for? Is it this energy deal? I don't want to die, Sans! You hear me?" She was typing more and more quickly and more and more loudly. Posting on various websites, reading the contents of them multiple at a time. What little he could see from all those tabs ranged from IT-employee-self-advertising sites and social media profiles, along criminal record databases all the way to fringe stuff like recently emerging creepypasta involving a symbol he had seen as simplistic graffiti on walls.

"* you can't be like this all day all night. and i can't wander everywhere you go forever either."

Without a word, she turned around to stare him in the eye, then faced back at the screen. "* Then we have to find this...thing! We have to end this before they can get me!" She wasn't very responsive over all from here on in. He spent the rest of the week basically being Alphys' shadow. Except at night of course, then the two of them got back to their nightly hobby. Committing 'hate crimes' against burglars, rapists and drug dealers. And even then, Alphys limited everything she said to the bare minimum and was pretty distracted at times. But regardless, he was happy to see them get through the week without Alphys disappearing.

* * *

Until Friday afternoon. When suddenly, it was last Friday evening again. Frisk had turned back time, and was now trembling in his chair while everyone else was having a good time. When he had someone else's attention, he put on a smile and pretended to be all in with this evening they were 'enjoying' for the third time. Sans was the only one that knew something was up, and from time to time, he caught the kid sneaking sultry stares at his adoptive mother. "* Hey Sans." When he and Toriel were about to leave he turned around to talk to Sans first.

"* sup?" Maybe this was where he'd get an idea what all this was about.

"* Before we go - you want to - uh - watch a movie together?"

Sans grinned and carefully went along with it. "* sure. what time you thinking?"

This human face was hard to read for most Monsters, but he had spent enough time with the guy. This casual spiel was a facade. "* What about Tuesday afternoon?"

Sans had extra long classes on Tuesday afternoon and Frisk knew that full well. What was he getting at? Sans tried laughing awkwardly. "* oops, sorry. got classes then."

"* Then how about Wednesday?"

And there it was. Something was up. What was Sans going to do here? Obviously, Frisk was keeping up the pretense that nothing was going on. But Sans usually didn't have much to do during the day, so he couldn't decline here unless he gave him some good reason. But he didn't have a good reason, except the part where Alphys kept disappearing, which Frisk was well aware of. He almost let his eyes fade until he simply improvised. "* oh, uh, wednesday. meeting some colleagues next wednesday. a study group..."

"* Study group?"

"* yeah, to prepare for the exams. college is really hard when you get into it - it's really - woah..." He had dropped his usual demeanour and gave up on cheesy nicknames. He wasn't convincing anybody with this, was he?

Frisk was really dumbstruck upon hearing that. But sure enough, for the time being, he nodded and let the issue rest. Sans was going to have to find out what that was about, later. And soon enough, he did. The very next day, he called him up. Hyping up some movie about talking internet smilies that sounded like it was gonna be awful from the get-go. And he sounded more nervous when doing so. Something was off. None of this happened last time. Sans and Alphys figured it was best to keep their guard up. Spending the days carefully and with Sans keeping tabs on Alphys at all times.

He stayed away, he still had his phone and Alphys had several tracking devices on her. But whatever was up with the human kid wasn't going to let them put it off. A trembling mess stood in front of Alphys' door, mere minutes after she had just arrived home and turned on her computer. "* Hello." It was Frisk, but with a very forced-looking smile.

She first shrugged together upon seeing him. He was trying to seem relaxed, but he was only a child. Even someone as inept as Alphys could tell he wasn't in a casual mood. "* He-he-hello."

They were silent for a few seconds. Both of them. "* I - I came by and wondered. What are you doing today?" This overall wasn't a week where anybody was convincing anyone. Regardless of how often you repeated it.

Alphys stood there in the doorframe. Frozen. Looking back and forth between her little visitor and the surrounding streets. "* U-uhm...no? Why?"

"* I've always wanted to go to the Kishibe13. Mom said I can go as long as I'm with you." The Kishibe13 was a tiny, crammed shop. A manga store. The only one anywhere near the city and the only specialized manga store - or overall comic book store - in the region. "* It's a relaxing week for me, so I thought now is a good time." This was a bold-faced lie and Alphys knew it. Sans had expressly told her that this week was passing for the third time, and that it was odd, since he hadn't heard from anything happening regarding Frisk. Any more than with Alphys at least. If there was some sudden need on his part to go visit that shop she was happy to show anyone this week, she would have told Sans in the last timeline, and he would have told her in the current one.

She really didn't want to go with him. Not now. She told pretty much everyone she knew to visit that store at some point. She and this little guy never met or did anything together except on Fridays. Then again, they had very far-apart age ranges, of course they wouldn't share that many interests. But he looked so helpless. She was afraid to go on some spontaneous trip, but she really didn't want to let him down in this moment. She felt like she owed him. It took her a while, but eventually, she swallowed down her fears, made sure she at least had all the essentials with her in the pockets of her lab coat, and agreed. "* Sure...it's a boring week for me too?" She caught herself sounding more like she was asking for affirmation rather than making a statement on her week. First, the video of the mayor and her nonsensical energy project coming up, then this. An uneasy feeling was pressing at her from both sides.

"* So...what are you watching lately?"

On their way to the station, he was trying to start some small talk, and Alphys didn't like how the corners of his mouth were forcing themselves up, but the way his eyes were adjusted gave her a very different impression than what would fit him smiling the way he usually did. Something was up. Something that disturbed her a lot. "* Ah - uhm - nothing you would enjoy." She didn't need to lie about that. The weather wasn't much better than on the day she was more worried about, this Wednesday. She had exchanged all the details with Sans on what would happen. Or at least what happened last time. It wasn't set in stone. Frisk was weirdly silent all of a sudden, the moment they had sat down in one of the empty groups of benches in the train. When he gloomily stared out of the window, Alphys took up the opportunity to sneak a text to Sans. To at least have him on high alert for when she texted for help or called him.

It wasn't like there was anything threatening about spending a day with a friend, but something about the way he acted scared her to the bone. No, it was more than that. Something she read in an old book that contained some references to humans, was that human intuition consisted of subconscious deductions based on subtle visual and auditive cues. And the clear difference to Monsters was that Monsters didn't need cues. They could to a degree empathise, even if there were no outward signs. But here, there was both. Something horrible was going on. Every time the train stopped in one of the villages and towns that surrounded the city, she felt like getting up and running straight away through that briefly open door. But this was Frisk. She couldn't just bail out on him out of the blue.

From the route they were taking, she couldn't tell anything unusual. They were heading for the Kishibe13 after all. Once off the train, she had more of an impression that Frisk was leading her, rather than the other way round. And from time to time, he stopped. Especially when she was ahead. The first few times, she didn't notice until she was ten feet ahead. And when they were halfway there, she could have sworn she heard him bibber a little. What was devastating him so much? And why did it have to be now and with her here? The closer they got, the slower they moved. Both of them. The store wasn't just in a far-out town in the city's vicinity. It was in a far-out corner of a far-out town in the city's vicinity. Up a hill they slowly made their way. Regularly stopping for the human to reconsider. This trip was an endless pain, and for different reasons, Alphys knew that both didn't want to make it.

Then finally, when they were only a few streets away from their destination, he took an unexpected turn to the left, into the shadowy outside area of a closed café. With the weather being as cold and humid as it was, the metal chairs were freezing to the touch, but in spite of it, both of them sat on a bench at the porch opposite from the entry's broken glass door. And here they sat for a while. Without a word being spoken. From time to time, Alphys snook a glance at him, but he never dared to look at her. He only stared at the floor with his hands tucked into his yellow rain jacket.

"* No." A little snivel escaped. "* No...I can't do it." Alphys first noticed it from the motion in his shoulders. Then from his silent sobs. He shuffled away from her, tucked in his feet and covered his face. "* Mommy...I don't know..."

Oh goodness, she didn't know what do do! How did you deal with this? "* What...uh...listen, what's wrong?" He wouldn't stop. "* Frisk? Frisk what's wrong? Talk to me!"

"* Nononono. I can't..." Still with his face sunken into the cover of his limbs, he shook his head and shrugged together even further.

Alphys was terrified at the prospects, but running away from it wouldn't make it go away, whatever it was. "* Why not? What can't you? You can tell me Please, I want to help!" She tried moving closer to maybe give him a pat on the shouder, but he only shied further away from her claws.

"* I'm sorry. I'm so sorry...I just don't know..." She could see the tears run down his small hands. "* I don't want this. I just don't know what to do."

"* About what? I-I-I'm sure I can help! Please, let me help! T-Tell me!"

"* It's no good." She was all the more terrified - for reasons she didn't know - when she heard my voice. From a pot, now filled with nothing but mould that was once some decorative plants, I had sprouted and was looking at them. This was - apart from the day that them being trapped in the Underground had ended - the first time that she actually saw me this way. In this timeline at least. "* Maybe we can't solve this on our own. This is definitely not the right idea."

"* You..." Now distracted from Frisk, Alphys pointed one finger of her claw right at me. "* The flower!"

I had done this introduction more times than I could count, so I rolled my eyes and ignored it. "* Yes - the flower. Frisk! Crying won't save her! Frisk!"

"* Go away!"

I sighed. He wasn't going to be much use. I was as worried as he was, looking back, but not being able to get emotionally involved that way had it's perks in that moment. "* Okay. Hey, lizardbrain!"

Now with a much harsher tone, I faced Alphys, who had quieted down at the shock of hearing me talk to her like that. She didn't have words, she only pointed at herself to ask for confirmation. "* Yes, you!" Slowly but surely, I had my vines work their way around the porch from angles I knew she wasn't looking to, until they were close enough. "* He is going to tell you everything."

"* No!" The human finally stopped covering his face and lashed out at me. He was a complete mess at this point, and only now we could both see it.

I wanted as much as him for this to go out well. But he had to pull himself together, so I did my part to get him to. I formed my face to mimic that of Toriel and re-sprouted closer to him to look him straight in the eye. With a mock-concerned version of her voice, I asked him: "* Am I not I worth telling her? Do you think so little of me, my child?"

"* Stop that!" He was downright screaming at me at this point.

So all I could do was put on my creepy face and scream back. "* Then tell her already! She's smart! She knows stuff, she's got stuff! Tell her! She can help!" But even if I gave him some time, his crying didn't die down. "* This is no use then. You! Listen." I got Alphys' attention back and made sure I could continue without Frisk getting in the way. He was too much of a mess to give her a recollection, but at least he would let me do it now. "* We need to talk. Something happened."

* * *

It was the week that you disappeared. On Wednesday at least. Only that this time, you hadn't disappeared. Whatever Sans had done, it worked. Frisk was calming down and focusing more on his every day school life again. Spending less time getting distracted looking at his phone checking for your online status updates. He even spent recess playing with some of the Monster children again. The weather wasn't getting any better, but at least the week passed and you were still here. But he was still hesitant with everything he did. He had a bad feeling about it. And he was right. A lot of the days at home, he spent not playing or reading, but talking to me, and asking himself what someone would want with you. Sure, I can fill him in on details that might give us an inkling, but there's only so much I can do, you need to give me something to work with. This pressing air still hung over his mind and around us. And eventually, on Friday, it got worse than he was afraid it would.

He was at Sal's with a few other human children, him and a few others playacting some western story out in the park, when an adult came up to them. It was a middle-aged woman with curled brown hair, a black suit, overaccentuated red lips, frantic-looking, wide-open eyes and a nose I'd recognize anywhere. She was ugly, she knew it, and was trying not to. As if that wasn't enough, she was coming at them with this self-satisfied grin that had bad news written all over it. Before she arrived, she pulled out a photo with Frisk's face on it, before she went on to walk straight up to him. "* Hello, aren't we a cute one."

Frisk stopped laughing at a joke when he was addressed directly. And she took that second to walk closer until she was only a step away to kneel and bend down to face him. "* Hey there, you must be Frisk, am I right?" He nodded to confirm it. "* Good. In this case, I have two telegrams for you." With a sudden professional distance, she opened up a little handbag she was carrying with her. "* Here we are. To Frisk. Description, picture and name match." She cleared her voice first, then started announcing what was written. "* 'Listen closely, I will only tell you this once. You will follow my instructions, and you will do it without further issues. I will acquire Alphys and if need be, you will help me. No amount of LOADing will help you. I can repeat what I arranged for over and over again, no matter how many times you try. Every time you try saving the lizard - or someone else does without you stopping it, it will happen again. This is my first and only warning. You will witness it as many times as you try to resist."

Frisk took some time to take in what was told him, but nobody could make much sense of it. After looking off to the side and processing what was told him, he looked back up. "* Witness what?"

The woman chuckled. "* I assume that is where the second message comes in. 'Why don't you go home and find out?'"

After that, without a word, the woman got in her car and left. A dark shadow crept up his spine. Frisk had to get home. He apologized to his friends and went. First he walked. Then he spurted. Then he ran, like his life depended on it. When he arrived at home, the front door was wide open. "* No!" His eyes were heavy the moment he saw the first bit. And there she was. Right in front of him, only a few steps inside. A large pile of dust, but unmistakably with her robe on it. "* No! Mommy! No!" He broke down onto the floor right then and there. There wasn't much I could do either. He was so overwhelmed he lay there screaming for over half an hour until he finally LOADed back. In the time they had spent together since the barrier was gone, he had come to love her like a child loved their own mother. He couldn't bear to see this. And he couldn't bear the thought of seeing this again.

When it was over, and you were all back on your little get-together, he was happier than ever to have her, and didn't let go of her until they were long at home. I only showed up in the night, when Toriel was long asleep, and Frisk lay in bed, crying. Desperate to find a solution. Something he could do to get out of this. I didn't have any answers either.

In the next morning, the moment Toriel was out of the house, the phone rang. A familiar female voice, the voice of that woman from before, was on the other end of the line. "* Greetings. I believe you recognize my voice. Listen very closely, because I will only tell you this once. Every time you try saving the lizard, it will happen again. If you don't want it to happen again, you will do the following step by step..." She moved on to describe in detail when to visit you, where to go, where to have you stand, she took her time to list everything so there was no room for interpretation.

* * *

During my entire recount, Frisk didn't quiet down. "* But with you, it's different. You have an entire lab's worth of stuff and you know how to use it." I finished up on a note I would have preferred not to. "* If we need to, we get the skeleton involved. But anyway, his mind is made up, and there's not much I can do. If he has to choose between Toriel dying and you disappearing until we find out where you're gone, then goodbye Alphys." Harsh, but by the time I first showed up, we were past crossing the line of lying or keeping secrets. "* At least I thought that, until he brought you here and decided to cut it short like this!" He was already aware that I was moving closer to him. I put on the distorted voice and decayed face of his adoptive mother. "* Would you really do this to me?"

Looking back, I wasn't aware of it as much as I am now, but I was pushing him towards doing this on purpose. I didn't want to see her die either. But why, I wouldn't find out until not long before I tell you all this.

"* Stop!" He understandably screamed and flailed to make me go away. I let him be for now.

I turned around to face her. My vines sprang out from all the angles they were growing from and grabbed Alphys by both hands and her neck. I deepened and distorted my own voice and put on the face I put on when I tried to scare people. "* Listen here you useless failure of a Monster. If you want any hope of getting out of this, here - or in the next LOAD, you will come up with something that helps us fix this!" I had her struggle to find words as well. But this time, I was aware of it. That was what I was going for. I wanted to put her under pressure, to make her think like her life depended on it - seeing as possibly, it did - to come up with an idea. She even tried to reach for her phone, but I could guess what for and stopped her before she could send for help.

While she did, I did as much thinking over this situation as she did. We were dealing with someone who not only was aware of how determination affected time, but who could remember past timelines. It couldn't be anyone from Frisk's little group. Monsters were out of the question, because almost none of them had an idea of how exactly determination worked, let alone access to the only human souls we ever had in the Underground. So they couldn't be it. None of the humans in the village had a reason. Had it been humans justifiably scared of Monsters for one of several reasons, they wouldn't have gone specifically for Alphys. The woman that went up to us and who called on the phone didn't immediately recognize Frisk, so she was only acting on behalf of someone else. Whoever did this was either human or in a very unlikely case, a Monster who had taken a human soul. The soul of a very determined human who could remember past timelines and would thus stand out like a sore thumb beforehand. Not to mention that they would know soon enough to avoid this, at least that was likely with all the RESETs and LOADs.

Alphys had a lot of experience experimenting with human souls, but humans wouldn't know that, would they? If it was to get to Asgore, this wasn't it. Taking Alphys would raise all the wrong flags. It drew attention of the most active and capable Monsters on the surface. Threatening him directly and in secret would have been much more effective. So threatening the Monsters or sending them a message wasn't the intention here, they wanted something from Alphys. Or, they were targeting specifically the Monsters' source of knowledge on human and more advanced technology like a strike to blind them, but why abduct her in both timelines then? Why not just kill her?

No, this wasn't about taking something away from the Monsters, it was about acquiring something for someone else. "* Go on! Or you will die!" I had to be more direct to get an answer out of her. "* How can we find out what exactly they do with you?"

At this point, Alphys was half-way screaming too. At least as far as me strangling her allowed. "* I don't know! Tracking devices?"

"* didn't work." Unnoticed by everyone until he was already there, Sans sat on a chair. No comic book, no joke book, nothing. Only him, in his regular everyday clothes. With dark eyes. "* tried that, didn't work. they get rid of all ya've got on ya." My face turned normal and slowly, I turned around to him. He had spotted me. I had ceased to care for only a few minutes, but that was enough for him to spot me, after I eluded him for years on end. Centuries if you counted years that never happened. Out of fear of what would happen if I didn't, I loosened my grip on the lizard and eventually let her go. From the shock, Frisk had quieted down as well. He was now distracted all the more from going through the implications of what Sans revealed with only two words. 'didn't work'. He remembered the past timeline. He remembered past timelines overall. He remembered everything Frisk had done. And everything I had done, but I had long used to the thought of someone knowing. Sans didn't pay much attention to that at the moment. There were more important things for that. "* they also know a thing or two about me. and if they're up for killing to send messages, it's worse. we're running out of options."

He sighed. Not a word was spoken after that. We all avoided each other's eye contact. Nobody knew what to do. Watching over one person at all times was impossible enough, but if killing Toriel wasn't off the table, killing Papyrus neither. What were they going to do? Lock away everyone they cared about? Beyond any doubt if the person or people behind this found out they were being directly pursued, they'd take similar courses of action. Their hands were bound. No amount of prowess with engineering and the sciences or super powers could get them anywhere. "* wait. not science. magic!" He got up and started zapping. He was first going to take them to Alphys', but figured that place was possibly bugged. He thought of taking them to that headquarter they had set up in the laboratory, but didn't want me there. But most other homes in the village, he was worried about being bugged as well, so he took us all to one place that wasn't completely out in the open, the forested area in Darkmarsh. Empty, dark, no-one came here, no-one listened. And once he figured that out, he took all of us there one by one. Even I wasn't spared of that.

"* okay. all on our own. alphys." Much more gloomy, he wandered up to the trembling lizard that was pressing herself against one of the trees. "* we can't place anything on you, 'cause they'll find and remove it. and they know full well about all the stuff i can do. science ain't the answer. not this time. magic is."

"* Wha-what are you..."

The small lights in his eyes hadn't been shining at all for a while. "* you're not gonna like where this is going."

* * *

It started on a Friday evening. Just a week after their first week into the university's semester. At first, she didn't pay attention to it, but when she thought back, that was when it started. Sans had gotten up, pulled Alphys aside to talk in the basement, while everyone else was having dinner together. They spent a lot of time together since about the same time Undyne started visiting the barracks every day with Papyrus. But ever since they came back, she was different. She was very silent and had grown distant from one moment to the next. That night, Undyne decided to head downstairs and ask her what this was about. But her bedroom was empty. She was gone. She had never heard her leave. When did she? How did she? She couldn't have crawled out of the windows or something, this was the basement. There were no windows. Moreover, her phone was here. But her lab coat wasn't. Alphys was just being paranoid again. This calmed Undyne down and had her go back to bed. And the next morning, it got all the more strange.

When Undyne got up, she found a freshly-baked cake on the table and an exhausted-looking Alphys in the kitchen, covered in flour and other similar materials. "* Happy anniversary."

This only had her laugh. "* Pfft, liar! It's only been what? Four months?"

It took a few seconds to settle in with Alphys. She must have stayed up all night. "* Uh...okay. Happy four month anniversary!" And none of that uncertainty she had had ever since she spoke with Sans on the evening before had vanished. "* Here's your four month anniversary present. It took me a while to get that!" It was a cube-shaped box. Whatever inside it didn't fit the shape, so it wasn't some extensively packaged bottle of oil. And it was heavy, really heavy.

"* Okay. You got me. What is it?" It was wrapped in several layers of wrapping and woven together with a shiny band of silk tied to a ribbon a the top to the best of Alphys' ability. One clean cut with a pair of scissors and some long unpacking later, she was left with a plain looking cardboard box. But what was inside wasn't plain-looking at all. It was a crystal. A solid, unshapely piece of rock, a bit like a gemstone, with several pillars rising up from it's base. And within the walls of it's box, Undyne could see that it was shining with yellow light. She wasn't sure what she was looking at for a moment. "* Okay, what is it?"

"* It's a lifecrystal. It's uh - know those arcane crystals at hospitals? It's a bit like that. It's like a faintly glowing lamp. It's connected to me. It feeds off my life force." Undyne wasn't answering her, so Alphys took a deep breath and continued. She had prepared something to rattle down to make it stick. "* As long as you leave it intact, this light will shine for you. Wherever I am, as long as I'm alive, this light isn't going out. Wherever I am, you always have a piece of me right here with you." From her reaction, which I'd better not describe, it seemed to Alphys that it worked. Undyne accepted it and was happy to have it. It wasn't like she knew, that she would actually need it. On the next morning, she stayed at home when Undyne went to college and contacted Sans. It had worked. Undyne was going to keep this lifecrystal safe. What came next terrified her. She had spent hours looking through messageboards full of people with weird ideas for methods to relax from breathing and thought exercises to meditation, trying to wrap her mind around what came next to get herself not to panic and make some big mistake.

What came next, she wasn't sure. But she had to remind herself that whatever happened, if she died, they'd bring her back. Frisk would turn back time and she'd be alive and well with no memory of what happened. They had to do it. They had to set up for Alphys to get abducted after all. Willingly. Buying time by giving in this one time was the only way they could hope to find out what was going on. On the day in question, she went to this Question and Answer panel like she was told she did in the first timeline - without Mesut this time - and as expected, she didn't come back.


	50. Libel in Quotation Marks

.

The Captain takes Charge

Chapter 07

Libel in Quotation Marks

* * *

"When it comes to the crimes against nature and against mankind, that Elves commit, they will often challenge you and accuse you of blaming them for things they're not at fault for. 'Scapegoating' they call it, an ancient Elfish practise, both engaged in by Elves both metaphorically and literally. And in a way, they're right. On one hand, all Elfish practices from banking to warmongering are - from start to finish - predicated on their targets and victims being nice and friendly to them. So to blame for what they do, is every non-Elf that doesn't kill every Elf they see on sight. All the more any non-Elf that allows them to occupy a position of power. But really to blame is someone else. To blame is the person that helped them survive, that led them to the east, that created high Elves as we know them now. To blame is a Boss Monster. The story of where the Elves of today come from, is the story of the branded god. It is the story of Baphomet the Exile."

"oh gee, story time."

"Yep, story time. Here goes. Thousands of years ago, in the desert at the northern coast of the southern wilds, humans, Monsters and Sand Elves built an entire civilization along a long and wide river. It is to this day popularly known for the pyramids and statues in likeness of Monsters that were built, and ancient misinterpreted paintings on walls and papyrus scrolls. Nowadays, in spite of all the obvious evidence to the contrary, the Orcs desperately try to steal away this history, claiming that the Sand Elves, humans and Monsters of the Koptic empire were all actually Orcs, even though Orcs as we know them hadn't been released from the Webbed Ring until a little over five hundred years ago.

In the shining cities of this empire lived a Boss Monster called Baphomet. Baphomet has always been a rather creepy fellow, and thus wasn't very successful with women. In fact any female Boss Monster he made advances to, rejected him and made her rejection very, very clear. So either out of desperation, to sate his fragile ego and his narcissism, or out of a combination of all of the above, Baphomet fled into sexual perversions, and started a 'relationship' with his best friend Ashtoch. Sound familiar?"

"What?"

"Nevermind, Alphys. Where were we? Oh right, Baphomet and Ashtoch. From there, it's predictable where it went. First it's just 'being gay', then it's descending into more and more outlandish fetishes, usually to the point where you can't admit to them without getting rightfully arrested and imprisoned. Together, they would engage in unspeakable acts, every day trying to convince themselves that this is perfectly healthy. That it's just like having a girlfriend or a fiancée. It's the exact same, there are no problems or drawbacks with this. And as it always does, their perversions slipped deeper and deeper into worse and worse depravity. Before they knew what was happening, they were abducting children and slitting their throats, because nothing short of drinking the blood of children would give them their sexual kicks any more.

Luckily, they were eventually caught. The pharaoh - a human - was about to have them both executed, but his royal advisor and his wife, Kek and Heqet, told him not to. Instead, they should grant the two some insight before their deaths. The two Boss Monsters had spent every day telling themselves over and over how much they definitely truly loved each other. How their love for each other was true and genuine. So the pharaoh was given a better idea. If they were really that inseparable, then a punishment isn't a good punishment, unless it separates them. So Ashtoch was executed. But Baphomet was given a different treatment. First, he was branded. An enchanted brandishing was used to sear his chest and irreversibly burn a black pentagram onto his fur. No matter how hard he tried, this was a special brandishing. Regrowing his fur wouldn't make it go away, nothing could make it go away. He was branded forever.

Beyond that, as the title implies, he was exiled. Sent to live outside of the city, and inevitably die either of thirst, heat or starvation. But things didn't go this way. Out in the desert, he came upon a tribe of traveling raiders. They were merely known as 'the Exiles'. Particularly psychopathic Sand Elves, who lived off what they took from all the villages and towns they raided. Baphomet was insanely talented in the magic of his element: the water. The things he could do, from summoning clouds from far, far away, to tapping into water resources the Exiles didn't know existed, seemed like miracles to them. And before long, they came to worship him as their god. He would guide them and work miracles to help keep them alive. In turn, they would continue raiding towns and villages and kill everyone in them. But they would keep the children to supply him with a steady supply of blood to drink.

He spent an entire year on his own with the Exiles. Wandering from place to place. But ever so slowly, as nomads always do, they were traveling in a circle. When they neared his home again, he had long replaced Ashtoch with a different Boss Monster, who he remained 'with' ever since. But the people of his home city had come to the conclusion that raising someone such as Ashtoch was too much of a burden for them to live in this city any more. Soon, Ashtoch's parents were exiled as well. And as you can guess, within a day, Baphomet was joined by Ashtoch's parents. In contrast to him, fully grown, since they had raised a child of their own, while he physically is stuck in his early twenties for all of his existence.

Together with several other Boss Monsters, the three of them led the Exiles to the east. The Exiles couldn't swim, so to pass a sea, Baphomet had to use his water magic to part it and have them walk through it. And thanks to him doing this, they arrived in the lush greens and more vibrant cities of humans and Monsters, free of Sand Elves. Here, the Exiles lived on, looking for different ways to live. Knowledge spreads faster outside of the desert, and they quickly realized they couldn't continue to raid for a living without getting killed themselves. So to remain with Baphomet, who made himself a more comfortable life, they interbred with humans. They became a lot more intelligent from that, but this newfound intellect was immediately put to use in the malicious ways they could never evolve beyond. Instead of putting their larger brains to use to craft goods and be productive members of society, they devised different schemes to scam people out of their belongings instead. Redistribution systems, extracting donations by playing at humans' compassion, trade, precursors to banking, anything they could do to siphon goods off of people who produced them, without actually contributing anything themselves. If it weren't for Baphomet parting the sea, they never could have made it out of the desert, they never would have adapted and interbred with humans, and so would nothing they created.

So to summarize, the reason we live in a dystopian nightmare right now, is that a single Boss Monster, four thousand years ago, was gay. Take that for destructive consequences."

* * *

He knew it would be tough. For Undyne. But he didn't know what she would do. Sans followed Alphys to the panel. The one they knew she wouldn't come back from. He knew that if he pulled something to stop her from getting taken away, whoever did it was going to go after Toriel. But he could still be nearby to get an idea of where exactly she went for it to happen. In fact, during the panel, he gave her a call that he kept open, to keep tabs on her. "* so, uh, how ya holding up?"

It took a few seconds for the trembling voice on the other side to get something out. "* G-good s-s-sofar...oh, who am I kidding? Sans, I'm scared."

The reason he did this, was so he could check out some locations. "* that's okay. anyone would be." The first was the first he and Undyne visited when they looked for Alphys. The abandoned manufacturing hall that Alphys was first abducted in, where they had found Mesut's body when he was dead.

But he didn't even need to go inside to spot something conspicuous. On the garage door in the front, a familiar-looking piece of office paper was flimsily taped onto it. Unlike what most things were capable of, this sent shivers to his spine. A message was written on it, by hand. It read 'Sans, we have been over this'. And Alphys was losing it on the phone, too. "* I...I don't think I can do this! P-please let's go home."

"* listen here. we're not abandoning you. none of us are. we're gonna get you back, okay? we've just gotta find out where you're gone without provoking something rash outta them. okay? everything's gonna be fine in the end. you got yourself a lifecrystal, remember? if anything happens to you, we can turn back time and get you back. it'll be like it never happened." Truth was, he was as unsure about it as she was, but they had to go with this approach. Their hands were forced. Speaking of forcing hands, with the other locations, it was no different. Messages taped onto front doors, directly referring to Sans by his name. 'You are trying my patience, Sans.' and 'Sans, don't force my hand'. Unless they could move around as fast as Sans, which was impossible, they had placed those there ahead of time. They knew he'd give those places a look. If that was the case, they must have been swooped clean. Probably even before or during the last LOAD. He had long come to understand that whoever they were dealing with - since they could remember past timelines, also knew how to cover all their bases.

"* I can't do this...I'm going ba..." Before she even said it, he heard rumbling and the cracking of her phone falling on the floor.

From one second to the next, Sans was in overdrive. He shortcutted his way right to where they were before and without slowing down, picked up the phone and saw a black van van slowly drive away from where Alphys' phone was. They had already taken her. With a combination of shortcutting and running at extreme speed, he followed it from across the rooftops of the inner city, never leaving it out of sight, to get an idea of where they were headed. The van went on and on. It didn't stop. In fact, once it had made an entire round round the block, he knew they were driving in circles. And then his phone rang. Had he been careless with this, he would have stopped to pick it up, but he kept track of the car while picking up. "* sup?"

From the background noise, he could gather the call was made from somewhere outside. On the other end of the line was the voice of a woman with a slight gurgle in her throat. "* I assume you are aware of why I am calling."

Geez, they got his number. Who were these people? For a start, now he had a voice to put to either the person behind this, or someone who acted on their behalf. "* can't blame me for trying." They were calling to discourage him from following the car. He was being watched, even up here.

"* If this doesn't stop, I am told you know what comes next." These guys were serious. "* A child can't grow up healthily without a caring mother." Yep, they were absolutely serious.

He didn't have anything left to say, but he kept the call going. "* it'd all be easier if ya threw me a bone. know what i mean?" It was best to stay vague, to stall. He stopped chasing the van though. If they could trace him up here, they could trace him from different locations as well. "* she's a friend ya know."

"* Yes, I was told that." She kept repeating that she was told things. Either she was indeed only a middleman, or this was a misdirection to make it seem like she was only a middleman. And she was keeping the call. They were making sure the van had a head start, so Sans couldn't just catch up with it after they weren't watching him anymore. "* Thank you for being cooperative. Please remain in place." This was way more organized than he expected. Several people to staff the van and at least one person was watching him either with a telescope, a camera or something like that. It was possible to watch him without him having a chance to see where from. And who knew who else. If all this came from one person, that narrowed down the pool of suspects quite a bit.

When the woman on the other end hung up, Sans stood there, frozen in motion for at least a minute straight. Now that his immediate attention wasn't focused on watching the van or stalling the call, he had to take his time to process what they had done, and that Alphys was gone. He still wasn't sure how to break it to Undyne. What to break to Undyne. What bits should he leave out? What should he tell her? Not to mention what if something happened? What if the crystal stopped glowing? What if something happened to it? What if Frisk made a mistake. What if he ended up saving over Alphys' death? Would he really go all the way back to change it? Could he even do that? And if he did, this other person who can remember, what stopped them from using that to seek out and enter the Underground and then create some completely new timelines?

Either way, somehow, it had to be done. He headed back down into the lab. Alphys was completely riddled with tracking devices. If there was any chance they'd make a mistake, Sans and Alphys wanted to be sure they'd take advantage of that. But no, they were thorough, extremely thorough. Within minutes, all of them were strewn around the streets in the circle the van was going. It wasn't possible to tell where it was going. He proceeded to follow through with two more angles. They had prepared in case they'd be called. But the call to his phone came from a public phone booth. One of the few ones still around. At least he had a recording of her voice. But if he handed that to the police, he'd have to explain how he got his hands on it. How did he know ahead of time that recording phone calls would be important? He'd have to go into determination, LOADs, timelines and all of that. And who knew if recording phone calls was legal to begin with?

Albeit with a much more tense mood in the air, the day went on as it originally had. The hours passed and Undyne became impatient enough to stop by the skeletons to ask for Papyrus to take her to the city. Like she originally did, she hasted from place to place, asked people whether anyone had seen Alphys. The only change occurred when she turned around and saw Sans still sitting in the car. "* What are you doing? Get out there and look for her! She's going to be around here somewhere!"

With darkened eyes, he sat still. "* she's not."

He wasn't even fazed when she grabbed him by his jacket and started at him. "* You don't go telling me this! Go on! Look!" This didn't get a reaction out of him. Nothing could. Not with what he knew. Eventually, she grunted, let him go and continued calling out for Alphys and looking all over the place. It wasn't like looking would bring her back. No. All they could do, was to try to find out where she was taken. And since she could be moved around, more importantly, who had taken her. Hours passed. And soon, even Undyne was too exhausted to go on. Even she knew that this wasn't going anywhere. They had to head home. The crystal shone as bright as it did at the start. She was still alive. This wasn't about removing her, somebody needed her for something. He thought he could hide away in his room and have some peace and quiet, at least for the rest of the night. There was no coded note, so Undyne didn't have a lead to investigate over the night. So maybe he could get some shut-eye and think about what to do next.

He was woken up so early, the sun wasn't even rising outside. The banging on the door eventually had Papyrus open it and a drenched Undyne walked straight up the stairs and started banging on Sans' door. "* You! Get up!" And the banging wouldn't stop either. "* I know you can hear me! Get up!"

He knew she wouldn't let loose, so lazily and slowly, Sans did get up and opened the door. "* You!" With an unprecedented empty glare, Undyne pointed at him. "* You know something! Don't try to lie to me, you know something! There's something you're not telling me. You were acting so weird last night!"

"* i was just..."

"* DON'T. LIE. TO ME!" Her scream halled across the house, it must have been audible outside.

He gave it a second to think about what to say. He could have gone about this several ways. Then again, he spent the entire night thinking about how to go about this. Where would he start? What would his first step be? Maybe the first step was to involve Undyne. "* right. wanna know everything i know? let's go." Without the least concern about Undyne towering over him, he wandered past her.

"* Where?"

"* the lab." The true lab. The true-true lab. Without a word, without shortcuts, they wandered all the way into the Underground, into Alphys' lab, into the elevator into the bottom level where Sans turned off the lights in a corridor and shortcutted Undyne into the area he and Alphys operated in.

As soon as the lights were on, she couldn't stop looking at all the machinery and old, cold halls they were passing. "* What is all this stuff? Hey! Pay attention to me!"

"* stuff. it's old stuff."

"* Does Alphys know about any of this."

"* known for months."

Many long hallways and banale questions about their surroundings later, they arrived in Alphys' headquarter. They moved it here ever since the first timeline this week had happened. The computer with several flat, projecting screens was still running. He had closed most software on it though, so he had to re-open everything. And thus show Undyne everything. Browsers with everything Alphys was looking up on their nightly crime-fighting trips, an online map of the city, a separate piece of software with the same map but displaying the locations of any tracking devices and other synchronized equipment, this was from where Alphys helped him. Immediately upon catching a glimpse of the browsers' history, Undyne knew. "* Wait, so she was here..."

"* yep. ever heard of the blue blitz?"

"* No."

"* better skip that one then." He found one thing he wasn't considering though. On the desktop itself, Alphys had left something behind that she had been collecting and compiling ever since last Friday. An unsecured folder titled 'ROSENBERG' Inside it were endless amounts of downloaded and saved webpages, as well as text documents and infographics linking bits of data from the webpages. "* we've been on a case for a while now. it's what got us started." He opened up some websites and public posts on social media about Centaurescue, that humanitarian initiative to help Centaurs that turned out to be a front for abducting humans. "* these guys were bad news when papy was dealin' with 'em, right? turns out they're much worse with humans, and they work for a 'mrs. rosenberg'. alphys knew she was gonna disappear, and she thinks it's got somethin' to do with these guys."

"* And that's why all this?"

"* i thought if we make crime not pay, that this either stops or gets easier to find, but it doesn't." On the other hand, Alphys sure seemed to be on to something there. Together, they went through all the contents in that folder. It was filled with smaller folders about individual charity initiatives, orphanages, shelters, as well as articles about people disappearing in those exact places. And in every folder, there was a copy of the section on the foundations that the money for these places was coming from. On each one, there was an image of the page, where in red circles, Alphys had highlighted the name of the Rosenberg Foundation. The money for all these places that people disappeared in, always seemed to come from the Rosenberg Foundation. "* whatever this foundation is doing, she's gonna know about it." One folder in this was only named 'Valerie', which referred to the owner of the foundation, Valerie Rosenberg. A person who had already antagonized and insulted the Blue Blitz, the pseudonym under which Sans tried to ease the situation by fighting crime at night. The webpages in this folder were all of fundraisers that she attended, along with more articles and lists of people disappearing in the places these events were held at not long after.

Considering Alphys put all this together only from having access to publicly viewable websites, Sans was far past any doubt that the police didn't want to lift a finger. She had basically nothing and found this out, they had access to registries, national and international databases on unsolved crimes, surveillance throughout all the cities this was happening in, and Mrs.. Rosenberg was still not behind bars. Wasn't even sued or charged or anything.

"* Yeah but how did you know? You said Alphys knew she'd disappear."

"* yep."

"* How?"

This conversation was unavoidable. It was going to happen at some point. Might as well now. He sighed and tried to find a start. "* okay. what did alphys tell you about determination?" What followed was him explaining to her everything. Or at least trying. Everything from Determination giving humans special powers beyond just souls persisting if theirs was strong enough, the things Frisk could do, and how they had something to do with Monsters now being free. He left out the part where Frisk lumbered through the Underground killing everyone though.

"* Okay this is crazy enough, even if he could, why are we talking here? Why didn't he just turn back time and stop all of this?" She was referring to Frisk.

"* he did. twice." He needed to go into what happened to Toriel.

"* ...I see..." As he told her everything, the aggravated tiderider turned more and more resigned. The more she knew, the more she understood the situation. Until she ripped out a microphone and threw it aside. "* I knew it wasn't our anniversary! I knew something was wrong! I could feel it! Something in my gut was telling me that something was wrong and I didn't listen!" She smashed a few other things, but nothing Sans couldn't replace.

"* hey, hey, it's not over." He had to get her out of this sudden breakdown. She was as far gone as this from one second to the next. Her face buried in her arm, sitting at the table, she remained still for a while. But he knew the trembling fish was listening. All he had to do was find the right words. "* we let it happen for a reason. we can get her back. but i'm gonna need your help." Finally, she was looking up back at him. "* they're gonna keep tabs on what i do. they catch wind that i'm onto them, and tori's gone. but you might be able to walk around where we need to go. we've just gotta get you geared up. As expected," Alphys had prepared for involving Undyne, too in the months that this place and similar ones had been set up. There was an 'Undyne equipment' icon on the screen. Upon double clicking it, two large panels in the wall to the left slid aside and revealed a closet with a complete set of armour, a replica of Undyne's armour. In fact, behind it, there was also a replica of one set of her casual attire and an 'upgraded' redesign of her armour with more hearts and spikes. And aside from the armour, there was a bunch of other stuff too. Spare eye-patches, eye-patches with in-built screens probably with software on this computer to interact with, she was sure planning on getting Undyne onto their little team. "* whaddya say? are we gonna try to find her together?" He offered her his hand and waited. Waited for her to process everything.

She was gonna say yes, right? She wasn't just gonna have another fit of rage and run off without a definitive yes or no. He hoped at least. She closed her eyes, calmed herself down and took a deep breath. When she opened her eyes again, she wasn't relaxed, but she had caught herself. "* What're we waiting for?"

Getting Undyne into a state in which they could work together was a challenge of it's own. He tried starting by making her listen to the phone recordings over and over to memorize the woman's voice. If they were to take advantage of Undyne's lack of experience by this woman talking to her, she would recognize it. She was basically bait, but it was a start. A bigger problem was that she had a lot less time. She wasn't nearly as smart as Alphys. Learning her course material took actual time, which she couldn't invest into helping Sans. So any legwork that Alphys used to do, Sans had to take care of. They continued fighting crime at night, but Sans had to set up all the software and walk her into getting what the displays read and meant. They had to give the impression that they weren't pursuing Alphys' kidnappers.

Which wasn't the case of course. And they probably weren't fooling anyone either. Sans coached Undyne into playing up herself being emotionally broken, to walk to shelters and other locations Alphys had noted down and tell this story of looking for emotional support and purpose by taking up photography as a hobby and taking pictures of people who did good work and made the world a better place. That way, they got photos and ID of the people that worked in those places. And either made people disappear themselves, or played a part in that happening. In the day, Undyne assured them of how virtuous she found them. In the evening, they filed them into folders full of people who, they knew, had blood on their hands.

More than a week passed until Undyne had learned the ropes even of the minor part she took in what they did. And during the entire time, the questions wouldn't stop. First it was about determination. Even though it was pretty apparent with all that Alphys had prepared them with, she didn't believe in LOADs and SAVEs. He had to get the frightened kid to make them redo an entire week, because Undyne wouldn't stop trying to pull the ol' what's-behind-my-back game. After that, she quieted down a bit to take in the implications. But then the questions would start again. Slightly different. "* But wait, hold up!" They were about to march back to the headquarter, but she more or less forced him to stop by not following. "* If all that's so easily possible, what's to stop us from using that? We could get all the info we need, easily!"

He went on. "* i'm listening."

"* You said it yourself, this Rosenberg lady's got to know. We just go and ask her!"

"* she's a big shot. pretty sure she's not gonna make time for you. even if she did, what's stoppin' her from not tellin' us what we want to know?"

A spear formed in Undyne's hand, she raised it and flashed her teeth with a smile. "* What's stopping me from persuading her?"

"* woah, woah, woah." He had to take a few steps back. "* are you saying what i think you're saying?"

"* I'm saying she gets to choose between telling us everything and getting stuffed with spears!"

"* that's a whole can o' worms you got there."

"* Think about it! I get us the info, you remember it, you get Frisk to do his timeloading thing and it's like nothing happened, except we know what we need to know!"

He shook his head. He didn't really know what to say to that. This Valerie Rosenberg was a rich woman, lived very luxuriously. And an Elf at that. When humans got raped and murdered in the streets, the most the police would do was grab popcorn. If non-humans were fighting it out, they'd stay out of the way, but this was an entirely different matter. "* wait, what if something happens? what if frisk saves over..." wait, that would be a first, he made sure everyone was around whenever he SAVED, Sans could tell from whenever things got turned back. "* never mind - that's a pretty extreme thing."

"* They've done something pretty extreme to us." Now with more determination, Undyne marched onward, straight to the computer. To their surprise, a Temmie was here. And the panels that held Undyne's gear were just closing.

"* h0i! im T3mmi3!"

He had dealt with those before in a way that Undyne hadn't. So he made sure he was the one that stepped closer. "* hey there little guy, are you lost."

She just smiled and nonchalantly walked away from the computer she had left running. "* all teh stoof iz intredasting!"

Sheesh, what was that all about? The moment Temmie was gone, Undyne re-opened the closet and took out the armour. "* All this photograph stuff you're making me do. I appreciate it, but that's not really me - that's not what I can do. Now this, this I can do!"

He didn't like anything about her idea. But whenever he tried to argue against it, he struggled to come up with any genuinely good arguments. If she was willing to pull this off and they were capable of it, there really wasn't much of a point to be made against it. It was extreme, but so were the circumstances. Before they could move forward with it though, there was something he needed to get done.

At a bus stop he came by, Sans sat on a bench and waited for the little human to pass. When Frisk walked closer, the skeleton caught him almost considering turning around and taking a different path home. But he couldn't after Sans greeted him. "* hey there. ya holding up?" Frisk stood there, frozen in motion. He was terrified. After little encounter with Alphys and the flower, it was never the same between the two of them again. Frisk was now scared. Scared because Sans had made it clear that he remembered. That he remembered everything he had done in the Underground and that he had an idea of the things Sans could do. "* take a seat. it's gonna be pretty awkward if you keep being like this."

Frisk didn't quite know what to say. But he obliged anyway. He sat down on the bench and stared at the pavement in front of them. "* i remember, okay? i always remembered. every timeline, every path you tried, everything that happened ever since you stepped through that big ol' door. i know it all. but look." He spread out his arms. "* i'm not attacking you or anything. i knew before, but the air was clear between us. nothing's changed since then. get it?" The human kept staring at the ground. Those eyes were impossible to read, even when he didn't. "* hey, i get it. okay? you've been through a lot. anyone woulda done some messed up stuff. and it all never happened, right? all water under a bridge." He had to wait for quite a while until the little human looked back at him with a little more confidence. "* there ya go." he even giggled when Sans ruffled his hair. "* so we're gettin' alphys back. i promise. but we're gonna have to do some risky stuff first. i'm gonna need your a-game here. can you promise me not to change anything? this friday, right? can you promise me that what ever happens, we can always go back to this friday? at least for a week?"

The boy was worried for a second, but then smiled and nodded. "* sweet. that's all. i just wanted to be sure. see ya this friday then. an' remember. we have to always be able to go back to then. promise?"

And then, he finally spoke up. "* Promise." That all went over a lot more smoothly than it could have. There probably wasn't any reason for this, seeing as this meant Frisk doing everything the way he always did. But the two of them openly talking about this stuff took some more time to get used to.

He got more and more nervous when the next point of order became getting down to realizing Undyne's idea. They needed to find out where Mrs.. Rosenberg lived. She had several homes. Luckily, there was an article singing songs of her hospitality when she received an ambassador from the Orc Lands to discuss a foreign aid arrangement. She had four mansions she lived in and alternated between them from season to season. And her seat for the fall this year was still in the same country they were in. Child's play for Sans to zap over, set up a telescope in a tree and observe from a safe distance.

'Saviour's Manor' was an estate as wide as the queen's palace, but not in the city, where commoners and tourists could look at it, but surrounded my over a mile's worth of green fields and forests, all of it property that belonged to her. There were stables for horses and equipment to play polo. A large garden with hedges one more extravagantly designed than the next. Chances generally were that everything belonged to Valerie or her husband if she had one.

There was security personnel in uniforms and armed with openly carried, two-handed firearms - in a country where owning, let alone carrying a gun was illegal. They were patrolling all around the building. The garage, the area between the garden and the mansion, everywhere. It was too heavily guarded for Mrs.. Rosenberg not to be here. He was pretty positive that this was the place. The only really weird thing was that the blinds on all the ground floor windows were down. The ground floor and only the ground floor was isolated from the outside world. It had several floors above it, but with those, you could look into the rooms adjacent to the outside windows. The building was too wide for there to not be more rooms on the inside.

This entire setup made him all the more curious. The kind of person this was, the rich philanthropist. Too big to fail, too rich to jail. For all intents and purposes above the law. To a person that could get away with anything, what was worth keeping so much of a secret? Either way, if Undyne was willing to do this, it was enough to be worth giving it a shot. The step she couldn't skip out on was getting geared up and set up to use her new stuff. It was insane how much effort Alphys had put into Undyne's new armour. As soon as the corresponding software - hand-coded by Alphys no less - was loaded and and Undyne put on the helmet, it immediately opened up scalable and draggable windows that displayed thirteen separate video feeds. Nine of different angles on anything in front of Undyne's helmet and four more on the back. She had installed so many cameras on this thing that everything in Undyne's direct surroundings was always visible at any given time.

"* Something's wrong.", she complained once the rest of her armor was on. "* It's tight all over and not nearly as heavy as mine." Undyne hopped around in place with a bit of a swing to test it out.

"* So you're saying it's uncomfortable?"

She shook her head. "* No, actually." She stopped and stretched around her torso to the left and right. "* It fits perfectly, but..." She took off the helmet and started to remove the rest of it. "* I knew it!" Undyne was holding up a part of a shoulderpiece. It wasn't lighter than her actual armour, but heavier.

And upon getting a look at both Alphys' version and the real deal, Sans too saw what she was talking about. It left little room on the inside. It was thicker And now that it was gone, he noticed something else. "* can you put it all back on again?" When she did, he was sure of the difference. There was a faint humming that accompanied all of her movements coming from the armour itself. "* ah, i get it."

"* What?" She was a bit slow.

"* it's not just an armor. it's an exoskeleton."

"* Speak words, please."

"* it reads your movements and then the armor moves with you. it feels lighter because the armor is helping you carry itself."

He could hear the joy from her voice. "* Awesome! Really?" She couldn't help but run and leap around to test out what that armor could do. And she was only scratching on the surface at that. "* Still, better get to warming up! I won't get past that security without brute force."

"* sure thing." They headed to a different, less important room for that. An empty hall that the Doc used to use as an improvised class- and briefing room. Now the chairs were in the corner and it was one of many forever unused rooms. "* let's see if you can dodge these." He started slow and easy. He summoned a few bone attacks that moved straight towards Undyne slowly enough for her to dodge. And dodge she did. So he had to go faster. The next wave of bones had less room between them, so Undyne ducked and slid through beneath them and got up when they were gone. Then, when he started making waves that she couldn't dodge without jumping onto platforms made of more bones in time, she tripped and got hit. Or at least he expected her to get hit. In truth, he only saw a circular silhouette flash up around her and his bone attack poof away. "* what was that?"

Undyne caught her breath, then tried looking around on her armour. "* I don't even know. Do it again!" The difference was that she got hit. They both knew that once he had launched an attack that she didn't dodge and it vanished with a flash of a circle around her again. They then tried not-dodging quite a bit more, until they were past the point where Sans filled the entire room with blasters, all of which aiming straight at Undyne and opening fire at full force. And even after all that, Undyne stood there without a scratch. Not even burnmarks or anything. It was as if the attack had never hit the armour.

"* weird." Weird enough to leave him wonder. But he had seen something like this before. He asked her to stay there and quickly had the assembly chamber make him a gun. A semi-automatic rifle like the ones the Orcs had when that one chieftain tried to kill Asgore. When he came back, he immediately opened fire at her. "* say hello to my little friend!" At first, the Captain was alarmed. But within a second, she got the same idea. In fact, not long after a second of him firing, he had to stop, because the bullets were ricocheting off of her before they reached her and were hitting the walls all over the place. "* woah, woah. now that i didn't see comin'. must be some sorta force field generator." The part Undyne didn't get, was that Sans wasn't aware that Alphys had the tech to pull that off. But apparently she had. All they did for the rest of the day, was for Undyne to do some target practise. Sans manufactured some training dummies that the Doc used to make for him. And even that didn't last for long, seeing as Undyne never let herself get rusty with the things that mattered to her.

There was one more thing Undyne thought of doing though. Without talking about what it was, she wanted back up into the normal lab. She went up the escalator and there, pulled a few panels off the walls. Behind a specific wall that Alphys had showed her, she found a little box. Something Alphys showed her where to find, but told her never to use unless she was likely to die anyways. Within the box, embedded in cushions to not damage it in any way, was a syringe filled with a deep red liquid. Pure determination, extracted from human souls. By now, Undyne knew why she told her never to use it. She had seen the amalgamates. But if it improved her chances of finding out where Alphys was the least bit, she was going to do it. They could always turn back time. Just before they left off, she went out of her way to use it. Pierced her arm with the pointy end and injected all of it.

On the next morning, it was time. One more time, they set up all the gear and opened all the software on the computer in the lab. One last time, Undyne put her helmet back on. "* so you really sure you wanna go through with this?" Sans was busy getting it all set up. He was going to take her there and guide her from in here, but he wasn't gonna do it himself. No more phone calls for him for that.

"* If there's any chance that this will get her back, I have no regrets." After she tightened it once more, she was suited up and ready to go. They both sighed. Worst case scenario: The entire scoop goes horribly wrong, Undyne dies and Frisk turns back time. Piece of cake, right?

They stood beside the computer, both of them took a deep breath, and then Sans faced her straight-on. "* hold on." He grabbed her shoulder and shortcutted them into the sky, and from place to place high up in the air switching back and forth between in a normal, upright fashion and upside-down to avoid momentum building during the milliseconds that passed between each jump until they were there. The moment they were, he headed straight back as well. "* can you hear me?"

Now only audible through the computer's loudspeakers, Undyne responded. "* Clear as day."

"* Suspect at nine o'clock!", someone shouted from afar. She was within the confines of a fence right in front of a large, elegantly designed mansion with pieces of metal and wood being aligned on the outside in a strange pattern of squares in different sizes. That only went for the surfaces that weren't covered in windows though. And in the garden, from all sides, men in uniforms and with a helmet came her way and pointed guns at her. "* Put your hands in the air!"

"* there goes nothing." Sans told her from behind the computer. "* it's do or die time." One more deep breath and she raised her hands. To both her sides, spears manifested in the air and following her gesture forward, they dove straight at the security guards in front of her. Three of the first four she encountered were immediately pierced and lying on the ground within a second. The last one opened fire, but none of his bullets arrived, just like when Sans tried that on her. She formed a larger harpoon with a spectral rope, launched it at the guy, pulled him close enough to rip his gun out, press the barrel onto his neck and pull the trigger. She had killed four people and she was only getting started. It hadn't gotten this real to her until that moment. And before she had much time to think about that, more of them came right her way.

"* Lady Valerie." In a wide hall, decorated and outfitted to be a living room, seated in a large, comfortable chair, sat a woman in front of a fireplace between gold-framed paintings. She lazily turned her head in her servant's direction when he approached. "* We have an emergency situation. It appears someone is trying to break in."

She smiled. "* Just dispose of them then." Intruders weren't in any way dangerous to her. She lived very carefully. It was too well guarded. Nobody could break in here and make it alive. But to not appear too disrespectful, she humoured him and pulled a tablet computer off the table next to her comfy chair to take a look at the surveillance she had access to. And the smile left when she saw what she saw. A figure clad in some kind of medieval armour was summoning blue shining spear-shaped projectiles from nowhere and launching them at all of her staff. "* No...it can't be." It was using magic attacks. It was one of these 'Monsters'. It must have come to the surface with those others. "* She lied." With an immediate fit of rage, she banged her fist against the table. "* She lied! She said I wouldn't have to bother with any fallout." And to make it worse, this Monster wasn't impressed by her security staff at all. It was slaughtering it's way right through them.

Her loyal servant, stern and straight in his smoking, waited patiently until he continued. "* Would you like us to gather your valuables and leave the building?"

"* No!" She snapped right at him. She appreciated the thought, but she didn't want to. "* Continue everything as usual. My kabbalah must not be interrupted! Just dispose of it! Throw enough at it, it can't last forever!" She would continue to sit here. Hoping that the problem would go away.

The last thing Undyne was going to do at this point, was to go away. She had already taken out twelve of these guys and they were still coming. Half accompanying her magic attacks with gestures, half dancing almost, she rained death upon her enemies. How many of them did this Rosenberg woman employ? "* Retreat!", a human guard was shouting in the distance. "* Secondary defenses!" The explosion that blew up half a lawn along with the hedge sculpture on it, right next to her gave her an idea of what that meant. Bullets didn't work, so two guards came around a corner with rocket launchers. They also were setting up an immobile turret, but no-one could man it without her spears downing them instantly. The two snipers on the roof were getting too annoying to ignore, but once they were dying and falling off the roof, she ran over to see those bazookas.

"* jackpot!", Sans cheered through the loudspeaker in her helmet. "* the one on the left." To the left of her, one launcher wasn't even fired yet. But it was armed and ready to. "* any blinds or door you can crack open with that."

Undyne chuckled. She simply formed a big-enough harpoon with a rope attached, launched it at one of the double doors into the building, and ripped the door right out of the frame, bits and pieces of metal falling on the ground all over, before she ran inside. Another two explosions to both her sides. None of both reached her. This force field made her invincible. Two more spears with strings and she pulled them closer while running back outside. With one more swing, she pulled them her way, let go, formed two new spears in her hands and impaled both in one move before she ran past them and back inside.

"* What's going on? This is weird." It was dark. Almost completely dark. There were lights, but they were all off. The only light here came from candles. The inside was filled with candles all over, and most of the light was reflected in red from all the walls and the floor. Why red? Within a few seconds, everything about her vision changed. Her helmet was switching visors to highlight possible targets and make it easier to see in the dark. "* Hey you!" With one more spear, she impaled and pulled a hooded figure straight to her.

When she ripped off the hood that covered his face, she didn't notice it until Sans mentioned it. "* pointy ears." A terrified, wheezing and bibbering Elf was desperately reaching for anything far away.

"* What is all of this?" He didn't answer, only call for help. Before this could continue for too long, Undyne pressed the spear downwards to open the wound she had already made far enough for him to stop. "* Seriously, what is all of this?" She found herself to be in large, dark halls with highly filigree arcs covering the ceiling in regular intervals. Everything was covered in blood and at the walls to both sides stood statues of a creature. A humanoid torso, but a roughly cervine head shape with the usual goat horns and fang flaps of a Boss Monster. Pentagrams, five-pointed stars were engraved on the chests of the statues and in front of them, on the ground, were pentagrams drawn in white around piles of severed human body parts. Before long, a few more guards came along. But with transparent shields and much more heavy armour. "* Think you're clever, huh?" Bigger armour she could always counter with bigger spears. They weren't as much of a problem as her and Sans making sense of what they were seeing here. These body parts..."* Wait, is this what."

"* yep. thought the same thing." This was what the disappearing humans were used for. They were being sacrificed at these Boss Monster altars. Who or what was this Boss Monster they worshipped, and why? Monsters had only come to the surface a few months ago, yet they had enough statues of this one to outfit all the walls in this hall and most of the rooms around it. There were doors all around, but they only led to more halls with Boss Monster statues. Someone was very dedicated. She quickly ran from door to door. Sans kept telling her to open them all to be sure. She left the hall and went down the hallways to open them all. Eventually, she came across something that got her and Sans' interest. Wherever she went, from outside and from other parts of the floor, she was constantly approached by more security guards she had to take out. But there was one set of five guards that weren't coming at her. In fact it looked a lot more like they were ignoring her and guarding a door.

Like with all the others, she made quick work of them to see that door. The word 'impostor' was smeared in blood over it, and when she ripped it off, she found a little basement. A bizarre basement. The light was on, but it was only a dim red light. There were racks and shelves filled with leather clothing, whips, straps, and along with the straps, someone was strapped onto a bed. "* Hey there! I see you're having a lot of fun!" It was a Boss Monster. A young Boss Monster. Naked. In black, just like with the statues, he had a pentagram burned onto his otherwise white chest. Undyne hadn't seen that many Boss Monsters bare-chested, but she was pretty sure that wasn't normal.

"* Oh god, can I help you?"

Sans was overjoyed. "* a witness! talk to him, maybe he can get us some info. but help him first, so you're on his good side."

The strange thing about his guy - apart from Undyne breaking into some rich woman's mansion, finding some sick blood sacrifice stuff and this Monster at the heart of it - was that considering he was here, he didn't seem the least bit distressed or scared. He just casually shrugged as much as he could with his arms strapped to both sides of his bed. He grinned. "* I've got a little trouble moving around. You could help me with that." He flapped his hands up and down to highlight what he meant. She she came closer though, she winced. For one there was the smell. The entire basement was stinking of sweat and other stuff. How long had he been here? What were they doing with him? What was he doing here? And on top of that, he wasn't just swimwear-naked. You could see everything and he didn't have the least bit of shame. "* Go on! Come closer, I don't bite. Most of the time." She slowed down. "* Relax, I'm just joking, get me out of here!"

Carefully, she undid first the straps on his hands, then those on his legs, until she got to his chest and his neck. Whoever put him here was very afraid of him. "* Ah that's a lot better." The Boss Monster sighed and stretched his joints a little. "* Been a while since I could move around like this."

"* Hey, wait." Undyne tried to get his attention. Which she seemed to already have, since the Boss Monster was turning her way while bouncing around in place. "* Who are you? Why did they take you here?"

He stopped and raised his finger. "* My name's not that important. But what about you? How did you get here. Don't tell me..." In an exaggeration of drama, he gasped and placed a hand with stretched-out fingers on his chest. "* You're here to meet Vallie!"

"* Who?"

"* Valerie Rosenberg. You know. You've got to know. There's no way you came all the way out here and didn't know her. Come on!" He started hasting outside without bothering to look for any clothes. "* Vallie and I go way back. Ever since you guys removed the barrier! Couldn'ta been more than two weeks and I found my way here." She couldn't help but let him go on. Too many questions were circling her mind. Why was this guy here? Who was this guy? He was strapped in the basement of a creepy mansion, why was he so casual about this?

The moment they walked out of the basement though, a female voice thundered through loudspeakers all over the place. "* Don't you dare aid these burglars, impostor!"

Impostor, was she referring to this guy? In attempt at sass, the Boss Monster placed one hand on his hips and waged his finger with the other. "* Ah ah ah, Vallie for the last time. I'm not am impostor." He stepped back leaned back with his chest and spread his arms to present all of himself. "* I'm the real deal!" He laughed, sighed and turned to Undyne. "* Ah, Vallie. Always acting so tough when you think you're safe. But you let me tell you, the next moment you have her on the ground begging for mercy. And then you don't give her that mercy." With the same glee, he started screaming onto a wall into what Undyne and Sans guessed was a microphone "* It turns out she likes it real rough!" That shut up Mrs.. Rosenberg for a while. Undyne followed him, but the Boss Monster spotted her staring at the statues and the human body parts. "* Ah, all of that. Yeah. They really know how to party. You wanna have a good time, befriend some Elves. Isn't it awesome?"

"* It's awful."

The guy moaned and let his arms sag down. "* Oof, kids these days. No taste whatsoever. Am I right lads, or am I right lads?" He stopped, stared at the trail of dead security guards Undyne had left behind on her way here. Then he kicked one of them. "* Rude. Being dead ain't an excuse to leave me hanging like this." He was slightly annoyed when he saw Undyne's helmet still pointed at the statues and bloody marks on the floor.

"* Speaking of leaving things hanging, could you please put some pants on?"

"* Aww girl don't be like that. If you don't enjoy that, you just need to experiment. Explore yourself. Find out what really gets you going! You'll be surprised at how enjoyable that is."

Finally, Valerie got some words in through her loudspeakers again. "* You cannot convince it. It takes an acquired taste to appreciate true performance art. And it requires a degree of sophistication and education that lessers such as humans or Monsters can't have, to acquire an acceptable taste such as that of us chosen ones."

The Boss Monster raised his finger again to snap at her. "* Nah nah nah. Not so disrespectful my dear Vallie. Remember, I'm a Monster, too. S'that make me a 'lesser'?"

"* We'll see how little of a lesser you are, impostor, when you face off with other Monsters. Deploy the mercenaries!"

So as to listen closely, the Boss Monster bent down a bit and closed his eyes. "* Ah that slight shake in her voice. I know exactly where she's going. Come on, I wanna see this!" They started to run to a specific place. A large staircase at the other end of the mansion was their destination but before they could reach it, four figures came down.

"* oh no.", Unydne could hear Sans whisper. Creatures covered in brown fur, a lot taller than any human or elf, with broad, muscular builds and a bull's head. Minotaurs. Monsters.

"* Wait, Monsters? I'm not sure if I..." Undyne hesitated, but she saw the Boss Monster give her a lazy look, before he rolled his yes. He raised two fingers. Four ice picks formed in the air above him. "* Wait, no!" With one swing, the Boss Monster sent them off too quickly for Undyne to stop them. And upon arrival, there was nothing in-between. The bulls tried to dodge them, failed, and every single one, the moment they touched their respective attack, collapsed into dust. He just killed them without the least bit consideration.

"* Puh-leaze. She throws a bunch of Monsters at you and suddenly that's a problem? Grow a damn spine. Let's go already." Walking up the stairs led them to a large living room with expensive-looking fine wood furniture, filigree carved clocks, framed paintings and a fireplace the Boss Monster was walking to. "* Lil' ol' Vallie always talks tough behind her microphones. But when you walk up to her. She always craps her pants and thinks she's soo clever." He walked up to the fireplace and pulled a candle above it, which turned out to be a lever for a mechanism that had the fireplace and the wall turn around to reveal a secret staircase. "* Go ahead. I'll be right behind you."

They weren't running but spurting. For some reason, the Boss Monster was making strange beckoning gestures with his arms. "* What are you doing?"

"* Making sure Vallie doesn't get the wrong ideas. Aaand allez-hop!" With one snap, he clapped his hands. It took two seconds, but then she heard - and felt it. Enormous, ear-shattering crashes shook the ground all over. She was convinced that part of the building must have caved in, and several cars' alarms were going off in the distance. "* Hokay! Let's go! I wanna see what you do!" From then on in, they ran. It only led down for a short while before it led to a stone tunnel. The door on the other end was wide open. But what Undyne saw was all the more perplexing. Sure, the sky was covered in clouds when she came here, but it was a bit rainy at most. Now the sky was clear, all of their surroundings were covered in snow. Snow and large ice blocks. It was some caricature of what she was told and shown what a deep winter would look like. And not just that, behind her, part of the building was destroyed indeed. In fact, the mansion and all of the roads including the car pool for Mrs.. Rosenberg's excess cars was covered in giant ice blocks that must have caused this earthquake by falling onto the ground just a few seconds ago.

The roads were all blocked off. Literally. If the ups and downs of this weren't a bit much, Sans couldn't have resisted making a pun about iceblocks and road blocks. There was nowhere to go except the snow-covered fields of grass. "* AAnd there she goes!" The Boss Monster pointed at some off-roader that Valerie must have gotten to before masses of ice crashed on all the cars. "* No worries, just bounce!" He did as he said himself. When he was in the air, a snowboard made of ice formed around his feet. When Undyne did the same, he formed one around hers. "* See ya. I'll watch from here."

All Undyne could do from here, was try to follow. She first gave this snowboard a few pushes, before she formed a spear with a spectral rope and launched and jammed it in the machinery in the back of the vehicle. On the snow on a snowboard made of ice, she surfed after it, holding onto the rope to catch up with one hand. There were still a few security guards. The car didn't make any efforts to make big curves, but the guard looked out of the window and fired at Undyne a few times. With the hand she had free, she formed another spear, launched and lodged it in the guard and ripped him straight out of the open window.

She then had to dedicate her other arm to readying a second, bigger harpoon, because the car was starting to take turns to try and shake her. Upon noticing this, she made her attack as big as she could. Launched and lodged it into the top of the car, jumped off her snowboard and pulled with all her might. Poured all the power her body and her armour could muster to pulling at that rope and maintaining it. The entire vehicle was pulled up and flipped over, with it's wheels still turning at full speed but to no effect. "* Gotcha!", the Captain mumbled.

From here it was all a walk in the park - again, in the literal sense, since they were in a private park. Slowly, she came closer. There were no trees nearby to hide in. All she had to do was keep a close eye on the car and Valerie couldn't escape. With both, she grabbed both sides of the vehicle's front body, bent the metal and ripped it open. The now vanished bigger harpoon had completely cut the driver in half. "* Hey!" Valerie wasn't in the car and running away just as Undyne was close enough for that. She was all out of patience. She wasn't going to let this slip away! No amount of running could!. She escaped her last attacks, but now Undyne launched a spear into the fleeing Elf's knee, pulled to make sure she fell over, and then pulled her closer and closer until she could pin her to the ground by the neck. "* WHERE IS ALPHYS! WHERE IS SHE!" She screamed right at Mrs.. Rosenberg's face.

The panicked Elf cried out. "* Persecution! You're persecuting me because I'm an Elf! Get off me you lowly anti-Elfite!" She would have gone on, but had to scream out in pain when Undyne lodged a spear in the ground - through Valerie's right arm.

"* Where is she?"

"* All right! All right! I know where she is! I can tell you, just let me go!" Undyne obliged. She wanted to see if she was really going to. "* Ah, thanks. Could you please remove that thing, I'd like to talk face to face with you." Undyne did no such thing. "* Come on, just remove it." She was pointing at Undyne's helmet, but she failed to see how that helped Valerie tell her where Alphys was. "* Do you want to know or not?"

Suddenly Sans' voice rang. "* left hand, behind back, she's got a knife." With one swoop, the Captain immediately moved forward and grabbed hold of both of Valerie's wrists. And indeed, behind her back, a highly decorated letter opener fell on the floor. This threw the one leg Valerie had left off balance and the fell back onto the snow.

"* Tell me where you took her or I'll rip your guts out!"

"* All right! Just help me up and take your helmet off..and give that back!" She reached for the knife that Undyne quickly held up and threw away. In fact, Valerie tried to crawl back to her knife until Undyne held her in place while she screamed and screamed at her to make her talk.

That lasted until they both fell silent when they heard the tired moan of an annoyed Boss Monster. He had caught up to them and was wandering their way by now. "* She's not going to talk, girl. Val, Val, Val, the chutzpah is getting the better of you. You shoulda just told her what she wanted to know."

Between irregular breaths from bleeding out, Valerie spat some blood. "* Impostor, why are you doing this?"

The Monster came closer and leaned over her. "* You're just no fun any more. Time for me to move on. Think yourself as high and mighty as you like, you don't have a lot of imagination and I got bored of you." He took a step back, formed a large boot of ice around his raised foot and then stomped on the arm that didn't have a hole in it. "* You just won't do!" He turned around to Undyne. "* Even if it means dying, she's not going to talk. She thinks too high and mighty to herself. She's way too proud to let anything make her take orders from oh so lowly creatures as ourselves. Even though I'm one of those too. And to me, she just WON'T DO!" This time, he broke Valerie's other leg. Valerie sobbed and begged for mercy just moments before he went on to break the same arm Undyne had impaled before. "* Oh, what was that? Mercy? No, that WON'T DO!"

"* Please." That only made him stomp faster and faster.

"* WON'T DO! WON'T DO! WON'T DO! WON'T DO! WON'T DO! WON'T DO! WON'T DO! WON'T DO!" Even when all of what was left of Valerie was a bloody mess, the snow around them formed into a giant baseball bat, which the Boss Monster slammed right onto it. "* WON'T DO!" The Boss Monster took a deep breath, eased up his shoulders and clapped in his hands. "* Woo, she was still good for a little fun in the end. Sorry that whole asking stuff thing didn't work out for you."

Undyne didn't have any words. Until she did. "* Why would you do this?"

He waved it off. "* Ah! Pfft, like she was gonna tell you anything."

"* This was all for nothing! I did all of this for nothing!"

He opened up his arms to calm her down. "* Now now, there there, take a deep breath. So what seems to be the problem? Let ol' Baphie see if he can help."

"* We were looking for someone!"

"* Who? Describe them."

"* A yellow lizard? Maybe she wore a lab coat."

Immediately, he smiled wide and nodded. "* Ah, the brainlizard. Yeah we had one of those. And a really fat orange dragon. But they were sold off within a day. Apparently they were ordered from outside. Something about souls and a machine. I didn't really pay attention."

Overcome with much more determination to find her, the Captain marched right up to that Boss Monster and grabbed him by the shoulders. "* Tell me, do you know anything more? Anything?"

"* Okay, okay, wait, so the guy that bought them off, he definitely said 'she' when he mentioned his client. But other than that - look you don't seem to get how charity works. All orders and purchases come with middlemen. We never actually see who's buying. Even the middlemen avoid contact if they can. We don't get any of their names."

"* I think you meant human trafficking, not charity."

"* Tomayto, tomato. Either way, thanks for a fun afternoon. I've gotta get back to the Underground. Gotta get Moley in on this gig. And Ashie. And Lucy and Meph. Can never go wrong with Meph and his big pet. They always give it the right pizazz! I'm gonna get the whole band back together and that's when we really get this party started!" There wasn't much room for more, since he was already sliding away on self-moving ice skates. Formed out of ice.

For a while, Undyne stood there, aghast. Not knowing what to say or what to do. Before she knew what was happening, Sans showed up and zapped her back into their headquarter. "* phew, well that sure was something. still gotta talk to the kid and kill this timeline though. you musta murdered over sixty people or so. and that guy, prolly better if he doesn't get 'that party started'."

"* It was pointless. All of it." Undyne didn't even take the helmet off. She stood in place, blankly staring at the screen through her visor. "* We went over all these lengths for nothing."

"* not nothin'." Sans started a text document. "* for as long as the timeline continues, we got the footage. so let's see what we got." He started writing down a list of the things they found out here. In part for himself to memorize for when time got turned back. "* So the Rosenberg foundation has humans abducted to sacrifice them to these statues. so we know a what and a why. they also took alphys - and i guess sam. and this guy said it had something to do with a 'machine' and 'souls'. oh and the person behind it is a woman. that's what we know. probably a rich or powerful woman to be able to pull all this off, but at least that narrows down the number of rich and powerful suspects by half." He took a second to process the implications. "* actually - if this woman's involved with this trafficking ring, then she's probably killed people too. so if not more, her LOVE is prolly above one."

"* Her what?"

"* nah matter. so we're lookin' for a woman involved with human trafficking with LOVE above one and who's probably been pretty interested in souls. that's a lotta material to work with." He didn't have to wait for Undyne to recover from her impression that there wasn't any use to this. There was. All he had to do now, was to look over all of the footage to really remember it, and then head over to the kid. Before he was really ready for it, they were all already back at the table at Undyne's last Friday. For Sans, this was when the slow phase in their investigation started. Monitoring Rosenberg hideouts, looking for people that fit the profile. Asking around in the Underground if any humans or Elves came along asking a lot about souls. When Undyne went to extremes to get him some clues, after that, the fruitful period of their search for Alphys ended.

* * *

Next time:

"* Only he who bears the widow's kiss can hear the spiders talk."

"* My poor cousin. You broke their heart. NOW I WILL BREAK YOU!"

"* This world is pointless, however you frame it. Take my hand. Let us erase it together."

Next story's title: Beyond SAVEing


	51. MANNEQUIN!

.

Beyond Saving

Chapter 01

MANNEQUIN!

* * *

So it was all done. Sans and Undyne had done this thing Sans was talking about. And yet Alphys wasn't back. It wasn't getting better. And yet, when it was all set and done, Sans kept insisting that it wasn't for nothing. He timed and framed talking about what they had done and found out in a way that allowed him not to mention timelines and all that in front of Mom. Though he did say enough to reveal some key pieces for them to pick up. One that he kept repeating, was that the person that ordered Alphys was interested in souls. And on the surface, all knowledge of Monsters as such was long gone, lost and only left behind as myths and fiction. If someone wanted to find out about souls and needed Monsters' knowledge, they would look in the Underground.

Furthermore, this problem wasn't solving itself. Frisk felt that he had to do what he could to help as well. Without getting in Sans' way. In private, Sans had told him about the regular threats he was receiving though. They could also remember past timelines, they also noticed when he LOADed back to a previous Friday evening, and if they found out Sans was directly investigating him with Frisk getting him extra time through the power of LOADing, they would kill Mom again. They had time to look for her anyway. The lifecrystal never stopped shining. It still would have helped to find some way to give Sans some repeating days to help find the pattern. Sans mentioned one of his thoughts. Every time Frisk reset, everyone who said or did anything different from the way they did at the same time in the last timeline, would either be someone who remembered past timelines, or who interacted with someone who did. If he could give Sans and me some repeating days, we could try to see if in the endless sea of people in this city, there was anyone who changed their behaviour from timeline to timeline.

But for the sake of his Mom, he couldn't do that. What he could do though, was to ask her to spend the weekend in the Underground with him. While Sans kept his ears open in New Home, he could look around in some familiar places. Contrary to her first suggestion, he insisted they walked the entire way to her house by foot. The scenic route in a way. They stopped in Waterfall though. The first of the shining glyphs on the walls he came by, bore something he had to confirm for himself. Something he wanted to check with every one. They were no longer shining and were in fact, unintelligible since Undyne and Alphys had destroyed them. But before he got too far with that, he saw a Temmie, standing at a wall around the corner, absentmindedly staring into one of the small bodies of water and shaking. "* Are you feeling cold?"

She turned around and had a very unsure expression on her face. "* Noes. t3mmie 0key."

"* Are you sure? Mom, can I have my..." Mom pulled out a chocolate bar. The only one for the weekend. "* thanks. Here, take it. How do you feel now?"

He pressed it onto Temmie's paw, who turned it around to take it. "* tanks. betur."

"* So what's bothering you."

She looked off to the distance. Something was really getting to her. And he wished he could help, but he had no idea what was going on. "* t3mmie scaerd."

"* Scared about what?"

Suddenly she turned around and grabbed him by his shirt. "* h00m4n! plaes promis u w1ll alweis d0 b3st!"

He wasn't sure what this was about, but he pulled her paw off and placed it back on the ground. Prentending to be dead serious, he placed one hand on his chest and nodded. "* I promise, I will always do my best. Is there anything else I can do?"

"* noes! tank lots!" All right, if this Temmie didn't want him to get involved in whatever this was about, then she just didn't want to. There went his only chocolate bar for the weekend. But if it calmed that Temmie down, it was probably okay. He was going to have time to ask around on Sunday. For the time being, he focused on passing by every glyph, especially the ones that related to souls. He knew off by heart, which ones those were, but it was the same thing with all of them. They were all destroyed. The two had done a great job with what they were trying to accomplish. If someone wanted to learn about them, there was no way other than to visit libraries or ask the locals. Of which there weren't that many any more. The exact Monsters that lived close to the exit were the ones that wanted to move to the surface, so a lot of them were gone now.

It was very quiet. More quiet than otherwise. All the more, when they left Waterfall and the rushing of water all around faded, only to leave behind the river. The only person you could see in Snowdin was just walking inside Grillby's, which they passed without visiting it. In fact, once they passed the big door to Mom's old house, she closed it again. He came here from time to time before. Strange thing about these big stone doors was that if Mom didn't want them to open, they wouldn't. Most of the time they did, so that Monsters from the Ruins could leave. Now that she wasn't here to carve it off regularly, moss had grown in places in the dark corridor leading up to the house. In the course of the weekend, the two of them would take the time to catch up on that.

To his relief though, most of the rest of the house didn't show as many signs of her absence. Except for a few cobwebs here and there. Those had popped up in strangely large amounts. And most of any foods they didn't take to the surface and eat, was going bad. There was only a lot of magic food from the ruins of Home, that didn't go bad, no matter how long you waited. While it was a long shot, he still used the time he was locked in here in, to wander around and talk to the Monsters here. A lot of the ones in the Ruins never moved to the surface. It was the same with them as what they told him. People from the surface came by in the first few weeks, maybe the first month after the barrier was removed. Since then, none did and no-one was asking about souls either.

The ruins had nothing to offer in this regard. So his next approach was to go to the laboratory. Alphys hadn't lived here in a while, but she had experimented with souls. If someone was the right person to ask, it was her. So if a clue was anywhere, maybe it was here. The door to the dark hall opened automatically. And once lit up, it was really empty. Anything that wasn't either nailed or welded to the floor or the walls, was gone. The big screen was here, but it wasn't connected to anything. The door to the elevator opened as well, but inside, as if he was waiting here, Sans was leaning against a wall. "* hey there." He casually strolled over. "* you looking for something?" Frisk explained to him what he was thinking. Alphys was the go-to person on souls more than anyone else. Maybe she had some books or notes left lying around somewhere that might give an idea not necessarily where she was, but what she was needed for. "* yeah, been there. done that. sorry. she didn't know what you'd be looking for and neither do i." Without a word, Frisk walked over to the board and dialed for the one floor you could go to. "* if you're gonna look either way, one thing. if ya find the room with a lot of computer stuff,, hands off. we use that to look for alphys. Sans walked past him and the moment he was out of sight, he was gone. Frisk spent over an hour wandering up and down the hallways. Looking along the cold, dark panels that lined the walls. Looking through any shelves and on and under any tables and beds he could find. Sans was right. There wasn't anything here. He was stuck. He had the power to turn back time, yet was powerless to help them.

Defeated, he headed back out to the searing rocky platform the lab was on. But only halfway to the stairs that led down to the river, stood...something. It was hard to describe with a single word. "* Hey you!" Between him and the river stood a white, human-shaped, plastic shop window dummy, the kind you would see in fashion stores on the surface. With scraps and scrapes wherever the silken hat and the fur coat weren't covering the plastic, it pointed straight at him. Through the front sides of the fur coat, you could see that it's torso was severed diagonally, with he upper part floating slightly above the lower one, and teeth looking out from within. "* Yes! I'm talking to you!" With strange floating eyebrows giving the red glowing eyes an angry flair, it grinned. "* I finally found you! Now you're getting it!" It adjusted it's position to plant it's high heels right where Frisk wanted to go. He couldn't head back to Mom. Mad Mannequin was blocking the way.

With an overly exaggerated gesture, it swung around to the side. "* You don't even remember me, do you? You thought it's all over. All forgiven and forgotten! And you know what? You were right!" Frisk's eyes widened when he recognized the voice. It was the dummy. The dummy from the dump. It had calmed down when he had last seen it. Flaunting both sides of it's fur coat, the dummy moonwalked back and forth to both sides and strolled around as if it was a model on a catwalk. "* I was calm. I thought it was all right, too." It theatrically turned around and looked up at the ceiling high above and covered it's eyes with one palm. "* But just a day later, you came back! My cousin was so happy to see you! And you avoided them! You snubbed them and stayed away as far as you could! They were devastated! Broken! They didn't know how to think of this! Why were you playing with their feelings like that? But I told them the same thing I told myself! Calm down. It's all going to be alright. No need to get mad." It did calm down for a second. Only to then take a menacing step in his direction and point at him. "* And then you did it again! And again! And again! They so badly wanted to make friends with you and so many times, you broke their heart! Now I'm going to break you! Dummies! Fire at will!" From all ledges, tiny plastic shop window dummies climbed up to the platform with one-use homing rockets on their shoulders, aimed said rockets at the human and fired.

Within a moment's notice, he reminded himself of his countless encounters with the angry dummy. Their attacks were coming in the exact same pattern in which they always came when the rockets arrived. He ran a wide circle along the platform to bring them all together and then rushed past the dancing dummy and back to where he started. "* Argh, Dummies!" The explosions from the rockets hitting them caused tears all over the clothing. "* You haven't improved at all! Aim at him, not me!" Even when shouting at his summoned dummies, he moved in rhythm and moved his finger back and forth between them and him. No matter how angry it got, it never stopped dancing. "* Do the move we studied!" Appearing out of the floor in the middle of the platform, some of them took up arms in a pattern he hadn't seen before. He wasn't certain how to dodge this. And sure enough, one of them hit and burst open his shoulder. He flinched and fell on the ground. And two more hit his legs. Judging from the strike of extreme momentary pain, he could tell his right leg was broken, and the last one struck right at his head.

Hoping that they would come up with a way to get Alphys back. It filled him with DETERMINATION. He was back. Back at the table. At Undyne's. It had happened again. He got into a fight with a Monster, he was killed, and landed back here. As usual, nobody noticed a thing had happened. Except Sans. Sans knew. Sans always knew. The evening went the same way it had the last time, except when Sans pulled him aside when they were already outside and him and Mom were about to head home. "* hey. what was up?" He told him about the mannequin. It took a bit of striking out because he recounted his original encounters with the same ghost and the body it was occupying in the underground. "* need a hand with that?"

"* No!" This was where he stopped Sans, came closer and started whispering. Hoping that nobody else was listening out here. "* Didn't you want some repeating days? I can try this, LOAD, and that woman will think it's because I'm fighting the dummy."

Sans' eyes widened and he took a step back. "* ya sure about this? i can work things out just fine." He was asking because it involved dying. A lot. Again and again until he could master this encounter. Frisk smiled and nodded. Anything he could do to help, he was willing to do. This was his way of helping. Finding an occasion - an excuse to LOAD back.

And as expected, the rest of the weekend went the way it first had, up to the point when he met the dummy again. "* Aim at him, not me! Do the move we studied!" Positioning between the centre group of dummies and one of the outside ones helped escape the rockets while running in a circle. And that did the trick. He could guide the rockets onto their summoner like he usually could. "* Damn it! Pointless dummies! Use the non-homing ones!" From out of nowhere, the small dummies pulled out different rockets and popped out of the floor and the walls in different places. He was perceptive enough to escape most of them though, but one of them hit his side and the pain struck most of his body as it burst his skin and muscle open. But this time, he knew what was coming and was prepared. With as much magic nice cream as he could carry. He downed an entire piece of it and felt the magical energy course through him. Within a moment's notice, his open wound healed shut. Whether this was the magic in the nice cream, his determination or a combination of both, he never knew. He only knew that it worked. What followed was a several attempt-long process of progression and repetition. Mad Mannequin would break out new patterns he had prepared for him, Frisk would sooner or later get hit, one hit would lead to the next, he would die, repeat the weekend up to that point and try again. All he could do beyond that, was to hope that this somehow helped find Alphys. Or the person that kept her.

And indeed, Sans used this opportunity he was getting. As did I. I didn't really appear around Frisk any more once we had that little confrontation with Sans. I figured if there was someone observing him, they might be listening in on anything said in Toriel's house. I became more of a silent observer who didn't show himself to anyone. Instead, Sans sped through and around the city, watching key people he was suspecting. Observing their behaviour. Where did they go? Who did they talk to? What did they do when they did? Because of a bunch of stuff Alphys had talked about to him, he closely monitored lots of high profile Elves. He kept a journal - written by hand - of stuff they were doing. Not to have it noted, the notes would be gone by the time Frisk LOADed back. That was just to help memorize what he wrote down, so he could re-note it in the next timeline. He had a whole list of them - in part prepared by the abductee herself. Philanthropists, corporate heads, politicians, the list of Elves was long. And the time Frisk got us with this was short.

He did this over and over. In every new timeline, he noted down his findings from last one and went through a rotation to observe the same people more than once, but to switch through them simultaneously. And nothing changed. In all the posh parties and fundraisers his targets were attending, nothing changed. After a 'week' of timelines, he was getting desperate enough that he started observing the same people for three timelines and watching their surroundings. And in the most unexpected places - or in hindsight, not so unexpected - he found - not necessarily what he was looking for, but something. There was a fundraiser in a public building in a rich neighbourhood. The change didn't relate to an Elf like Alphys kept alluding to it probably doing. Instead, he spotted an old friend on his first time here. Jaclyn Wimble. The mayor he caught cheating her way into getting re-elected with nobody doing or saying a thing about it. The mayor that had to have killed over a hundred people to gather as much EXP as she had. She was at that press conference where Alphys was taken. And she had changed ever since he had encountered her in their earlier time on the surface. She was wearing her hair longer, down to the neck and dyed brown. She had a less tense face, it was more relaxed. But it had an unsettling smile on it. She didn't talk to many people and when she did, she simply nodded at what someone had to say.

And this smile, this creepy smile. One timeline later, the smile was gone. As was the woman that had it on. Same fundraiser, same attendants, attendants even standing in roughly the same constellation, but Jaclyn Wimble was nowhere to be found. She didn't come here. "* gotcha.", he whispered, packing together his telescope. It wasn't a hit - not yet - but it was something. This didn't have to mean that she could remember past timelines. It was possible, but not guaranteed. If the person causing the change in the timeline was someone she interacted with, that would be the reason she wasn't here. But by that point, there wasn't an awful lot of timelines to spend investigating left.

Frisk had gotten better at this encounter pretty quickly. Mad Mannequin was past the point where they were just breakdancing circles on the floor with their high heels long flung off. "* Nooo! You stupid, pointless, incompetent wimps! I'll have to do it myself! With knives!" He got up on the floor and grinned maliciously with his crass, magic eyebrows. From within their coat, they pulled out a knife and tossed it the human's way. He thought he had escaped it, when he couldn't help but yelp at the spike that went through his left hand. Another knife had come his way and cut in it quite deeply. The mannequin laughed. "* Ha! This time I knew better than to only bring one knife!" From some hiding place behind a rock, they swung up two complete sets of knives. They readied one more. "* You can't escape, it's pointless!" With Frisk now keeping an eye on them, it was easier to dodge it. "* Pointless!" The next knife, and he dodged it. But then, the dummy pulled out a whole fan of knives that they spread out from their plastic hands. And threw them all at him in quick succession. "* Pointless, pointless, pointless, pointless, pointless!" Dodging them all didn't do much. They simply readied another fan and sprayed those knives in all directions. "* Pointless, pointless, pointless, pointless, pointless! Darn it, why are you not dying? I should have brought more than only two sets of knives!" For once, they were angry enough to stop either posing or dancing and stomped on the ground with one foot. "* If nothing else works, I still have one card up my sleeve! An inspiration from when I was looking for you out there!" The Mannequin moonwalked back to it's original position, stood straight, swung their head back and spread out their arms. "* If these dummies attacking directly won't work, and knives don't work either, then maybe me going all out will!" The mannequin took a deep breath and screamed it out in a drawn out fashion. "* The Wardrobe!" A visible wave of magic covered his surroundings. All around, full-sized clothing stands lined with varying costumes appeared with medieval weapons floating in each one's vicinity ready to attack.

But before they could, Mad Mannequin stuttered. "* Oh...what?" They pulled their hand in to touch a hole that had appeared in their upper torso. "* I...I..." More than anything surprised at what was happening, they merely looked back at Frisk while more subtly than with other Monsters, you could see the transparent veil that hung over the lifeless plastic doll dissolve. More and more, the shop window dummy morphed back into normalcy, and the brief scattering of dust from where it did could barely be seen with a ghost like itself. The racks disappeared back into the ground, and the lifeless dummy collapsed onto the floor. What had happened? Well, something killed the ghost that inhabited the mannequin. But what?

Frisk spent several seconds stuck in something between shock and confusion. What had just happened? It took a while to process what he had seen. The dummy's sudden surprise, the hole that appeared in their chest. The hole. Like a bullet-hole. Frisk tried to remember how the dummy stood. He moved closer to the dummy. It now really was just a broken piece of plastic in a human-looking shape. It had little holes and signs of damage all over it, but one hole cleanly went right through it. It was hollow on the inside. But still. He had to think clearly. He remembered the angle at which it stood when it happened. He tried to give the angle a rough estimate, but that just led to a different plateau, far in the distance in Hotland. And opposite from it, he could spot a tiny little dent in the wall of the lab. Below it, something rolled on the floor. A lengthy metal object, pointy at one end. This was the point where he couldn't do much more on his own. He called Sans on the phone. "* Sans?" The skeleton probably knew what to do with this. "* Something happened. You should take a look."

Practically within seconds, he was here. "* what happened...is that?" A little bummed out, he pointed at the motionless dummy. "* did you..." When he saw Frisk hold up the bullet, he got a better idea of what happened. "* what? gimme a second with this." It was a long round. And a solid one, designed to be used for sniper rifles. But attacking a ghost - even with a gun - would have no effect, right? But it did, so how did it have an effect? Without talking to the kid for much longer, he took the object to the lab. There were some old pieces of equipment he would rub the dust off of to use to run some tests. And his first suspicion was confirmed on the first try. It wasn't a normal bullet. It was a magic-infused bullet. Someone - probably not a Monster - found out how to convert electric energy into storable magic energy, and how to stably infuse lifeless objects with it, to use them for magic attacks. Someone with in-depth knowledge on how magic worked and how to handle it, made this. Or someone with help from someone who had that knowledge. Alphys' abductors. If they had her, that was a piece of cake. The moment he figured this, he shortcutted back outside, took a look at the scene where it happened and tried to guess where the shot had come from to head there. If he hurried, maybe he could still catch the shooter. He did get a good idea of where the shot was fired from, but there was a lift on that platform, the lift was long gone and so was the shooter. They could be anywhere in New Home at this point.

It took hours for that phone call he was expecting to arrive. "* made it back outta here, didn't you?"

"* Take out or in other ways dispatch the dummy before it gives the child any trouble. You know what happens if you don't." It was that same woman that always called when Alphys' abductors were getting impatient with him. When he was getting a little too close for their comfort. Strangely enough, they didn't call when Undyne broke into Mrs.. Rosenberg's mansion. Another indicator that the Rosenbergs weren't the culprits after all. She put the phone on the hook immediately, too. As he usually did, he went through the routine of using Alphys' setup to track the call back, but it was another public phone more errand he and the kid ran to move on, was to redo the weekend following a path where he wouldn't run into the dummy again.

And all of that aside, at least he got something out of this whole ordeal. A name. Jaclyn Wimble. He finally could really follow a lead and see what she was about. Before he really struck out and started following her, he turned on the computer and opened up everything Alphys had collected on her. Everything around Alphys disappearing started with this 'Clean Power Project'. Builvers from the Underground getting hired to build powerplants. Ten plants, most of them were coal or nuclear, none of them were needed to power the city. But unless they were needed for something, they wouldn'ta been built. So what were they? A job-creating measure? Bit of an expensive job-creating measure. He stopped by a few of them to give them a look. Most of them were already finished. Only inside a few of them, you would find some last bits of construction and signs of ongoing repairs to be found. If builvers were one thing, that was fast. So he waited until night to shortcut inside and wander the hallways within some of them. He had to, they were all behind fences and heavily guarded at all the entrances. Partly inside, too, but Sans had the tools and the know-how to navigate around those.

His first approach to this was taking into account what happened at that pizza parlor. He was looking for a person. Maybe several people. Maybe some hart-to-spot rooms with people locked inside. Maybe chained inside? He didn't know. He just thought it could be another front for human trafficking, but even bringing along some mobile x-ray and more advanced scanning gear didn't yield any results. What made him wonder all the more, was that there were no phone calls. There was no way this place had no surveillance, but he wasn't getting any phone calls from that lady asking him to stop investigating. He was already planning on sitting back and letting Undyne do this, but hey, if they didn't get in the way of him doing it, he was okay with that.

He had spent two weeks in this increasingly cold weather, until one night, he was wandering the snow-covered roof of one of the plants and spotted something. Envisioning the plan of how this plant worked and fed it's power into the city's network, there was one big power line that was there, yet made no sense necessity- or supply-wise. In fact he found it on all the plants. On a map, the plants made a circle. Those spare power lines led to the centre of that circle. And at the centre was one more facility. He couldn't think of any official purpose for it, but it was there nonetheless. A towering metal structure, a bit too narrow to be a factory, but big enough to warrant a fenced-off compound big enough to serve as parking space for a whole fleet of trucks. A fleet of trucks that wasn't here. On it's inside, it was all one big hall, with machinery lining the outside walls of it. There were catwalks along all the outside walls and leading onto a metal structure that hung over what lay in the middle of the ground floor. There, one big machine stood with a bench. Straps were attached to the bench, arranged in a way that suggested that it was meant to forcibly hold someone in place, a bit like the adaptation workbench. But it was different. It was more crude than most of the stuff the Doc made. He could tell that just from looking at it from the distance and seeing half the panels not being in place and the cables hanging outside. But the bench had an unusual shape. It was made for someone broader than the average human. And he had to explore the different places here from a higher distance and with less time to look at each particular spot. He couldn't take a close look at the machinery, because it was heavily guarded. Much more heavily than the powerplants. Whatever was here, it was important. And the tubes that led from the machine to the bench...what would they do to whoever was strapped in there? What could you do to a single person that would take ten fully operational plants worth of power?

During the night - in all the nights, he was free to investigate. Nobody made major efforts to stop him. The guards may not spot him, but surveillance sure did. Then again, nothing interesting was happening whenever he did either. All the Monday nights, Tuesday nights, Wednesday nights, Thursday nights, Saturday nights, Sunday nights, every night he wasn't occupied on, he spent visiting these plants and most of all, that structure in the middle, the Oldenburg building as it was called, telling by the plaques and signs outside. But it yielded nothing. In the days, he followed Jaclyn around. When she once was in the park, he casually strolled by and sat on a park bench next to her. She had broken off a piece of a bar of chocolate and didn't pay much attention to him. After a while of the two of them silently watching the passers-by, Sans tried starting a conversation. "* so, uh, mrs mayor right? honored to meet ya."

When she heard him talk, she put the bar away and faced him. Again with this unsettling smile. "* Greetings to you, too. You must be 'Sans'. I saw you in the news." For a moment, he was really worried that she mighta been referring to the Blue Blitz, but he quickly realized that she meant all the way back on their first day on the surface. When the press was all over them. "* Well. I must be going. It is a busy day and my breaks are short." The moment she turned her back on him, he planted a tracking device on her and waved her goodbye. He moved way too fast and too carefully for her to notice. All he had to do now was follow her movements, or so he thought. Within an hour, the device stopped moving. In fact, the clothes it was in were thrown away in a trashcan. Suspicious, but not conclusive. Judging by her LOVE value, she was a serial killer. So her having something to hide was obvious. Didn't necessarily mean she was the one he was looking for. But he didn't have any other leads to go on.

To make it worse, he couldn't continue on this. Time was running out in a way he didn't expect it to. One Friday in the late afternoon, when he was wrapping up checking out the house a fundraiser was in, back in the lab, an alarm was sounding. An alarm that immediately put a cold grip around his spine. An alarm he had set up months ago, and that he had hoped he would never, ever hear. A few rooms away, stowed away but set as loudly as it had to, was the old navigation system of the Doc's time machine. The anomaly continued as expected. Stopping and creating new timelines here and there. Frisk was the anomaly after all. But only two timelines away, it happened again. It was set up to alarm him in case the timelines would ever stop. And that happened. A bit further down the line, there was just nothing to measure. Again. He kept trying to buy time and now time was running out. The fear made him lose it. Without another thought, he shortcutted up to the surface, grabbed Frisk right where he stood and took him back into a far-off part of the lab where he couldn't escape. Mostly out of habit, he tried to appear casual and relaxed. "* hey there. just happened to be in the neighbourhood."

When the kid came to his senses, he looked around the dark walls. "* This isn't my neighbourhood."

Sans sighed. "* ima cut to the chase then. what did you do?" He pressed his index finger strongly onto the kid's chest to make it hurt. "* what. did you. do?" Frisk just looked at him with little understanding of what this was about. "* don't play stupid with me, okay? what did you do? or - well - what will you do?"

"* Sans, what is going on?"

The skeleton took a deep breath, grabbed the navigation system and paced backwards and forwards. "* you tell me, this! what're you seeing?" He pointed the display at him. Then again, a human kid prolly couldn't make much sense of the graphs on it. "* i know it's been way back. way back. almost every run through the underground came after that. but you do remember that one time right? yea, that time. the time when you killed everyone? ring a bell? huh? remember what i told you there? timelines stopping and starting and then just ending? as if there was nothing to happen, nothing existed for any events to occur around it? it's happening again!"

Frisk seemed more and more unsure and was backing off until he hit a table behind him. "* What are you saying? What do you mean it's happening again?"

Playing dumb, huh? He guessed he had to step it up. "* the world. i'm sayin' the world is ending. a few timelines from now, it all stops. completely. you're gonna do somethin' that ends the world. everything. this place, the underground, the surface, the earth, every planet, every star, every galaxy, it's all ending and i'm pretty sure it's got somethin' to do with you."

More and more, the desperate-looking kid was shrinking together, with nowhere to go and no idea what to say. From what it seemed, he really did have no idea what Sans was talking about. "* I never tried to end the world." Whether out of rage or lack of an idea on what to do, Sans pretended to take him by his word, gave him his jacket back and brought him back to the surface. And stopped all investigations. He went back to what he did last time. He monitored the kid. Very closely. Whether he was openly there, or watched him from afar, all the trust they had built up on the surface was gone in an instant. How was this kid's determination going to do it? When would he snap? How would he snap? Why would he snap? Why now? Why in the coldest of winter, when there were days with more snow than in Snowdin, when christmas was only a few weeks away?

And the evening when they all visited Undyne was as tense as they expected. Until the flow of it was broken by a phone call. "* Hello? Frisk here?" On Frisk's phone of all things. He left the table to fetch it and take it, he was surprised at who was calling. "* Flowey?"

My voice was screaming from the other side. "* Listen! I know where Alphys is! Whatever you do! Don't SAVE! LOAD! You have to LOAD to last week! Now! LOAD or you'll never be able to LOAD again!" I wasn't being in any way devious, it was earnest. Dead honesty was in my voice, strong enough to carry over to him. "* I'll explain later, but do it!"


	52. The Widow's Kiss

.

Beyond SAVEing

Chapter 02

The Widow's Kiss

* * *

Things would have ended pretty badly. We wouldn't be talking right now, unless Sans wasn't the only person I was watching. And unless Sans wasn't the only person looking for Alphys.

The Abyss reached a lot further than just through Waterfall. It connected Waterfall with Hotland. In fact in a part of it down the cliffs from Hotland, in a darker, more hollow area that the magma flowed far away from, lay the domain of an old friend of Toriel's. She visited the surface almost every day, but she wanted to visit her for a cup of tea. Slowly and diligently, she wandered along the rocky cliffs down from the streets of New Home, into darker, more damp caverns. You knew you were getting closer to her domain, when wherever you stepped, something was crawling out of the way and every wall around you was covered in cobwebs. At the end of her long trek, only necessary when you didn't have something to carry you up and down, she arrived at her destination. A cliff, deep down in the dark. Pitch black all around. The only light came from some lightly populated cave above. At the end of the cliff, on a little podium just at the height of her waist, was a bell you could ring. Which she did.

From here, she had to wait. You always had to wait. It took a few minutes until she saw the first few strands of cobwebs being dragged up along the walls on the other side by enormous swarms of spiders. And by regular swarms of enormous spiders. Strand by strand, they were carried from below her far above to serve as supports for one gigantic and very solid web that was brought up from below like moving an entire floor of a building up and down an elevator. Enthroned on on a little chair next to a small, round, coffee table, was the old friend she had long enlisted to help out in Toriel's school as a teacher. Tuffet, Muffet's mother. A very long body of long, silky hair hung off the lean of the chair. She was wearing an all black dress on her purple skin. And her fangs were twice as long as those of her little daughter. "* The surface is becoming rather tense. I was almost worried you wouldn't find the time." Once Toriel was sure that the spiders had secured their floor, she stepped onto it and into the centre to sit at the coffee table.

Tuffet had already prepared a teapot with several cups. On weeks when Frisk was with Asgore, Toriel regularly came down here for a cup of tea to talk with Tuffet about whatever little changes were going on on the surface. At least the ones Toriel knew of. One pretty big one was when Alphys disappeared. "* Yes. With what has been happening, my friends seem to be at a loss. He is always so vague about what he talks about, but Sans says he is running out of ideas. Apparently, her disappearing has something to do with disappearing humans and the..." She pulled out a little notebook to look up a name she had trouble remembering. "* ...the Rosenberg foundation."

"* Disappearing humans?"

"* And souls. He said something about someone being interested in souls."

"* And that foundation, what is it exactly?"

"* Apparently a fund to collect tax money to employ for private interests. I can't publicly question their legitimacy though. Our school depends on one of them."

"* I see. Then if the skeleton's approaches don't work, maybe I should employ my own."

Toriel closed her yes and made a calming gesture. "* I really don't want to impose this kind of burden on you."

"* But I insist. If one Monster just being ripped from their inner circle is something that is allowed to stand, who is to guarantee my Muffet's safety?" Of course, they both knew that Muffet probably could watch over herself and if anything, they had to worry about Muffet kidnapping people, not the other way around. But Tuffet and Toriel were dancing the dance of the etiquette they came to maintain when interacting with each other. Tuffet took a sip from her cup, placed it down, and leaned on the table with two of her wrists. "* I already have a few ideas in mind."

They talked about a lot of things. Tuffet and Toriel. But throughout all of it and even afterwards, her mind was stuck on this new impulse. She wanted to explore the surface. Beyond just that one village. And she wanted to see what she could do concerning their lost friend. First thing upon guiding her spiders to bring her back down to the area in front of the little smoothly-carved cave that was her abode, was to head back into her children's bedroom. Yellow frogs in plated armor and with spears guarded both sides of her front door, and a few were posted in her house. Croaksaders. The more explorative among Whisperers such as herself had more of them. Deep inside the narrow corridors of her house, she walked all the way to the back, the most isolated, the most safe from anywhere in the outside world, to look over her most precious. Curd and Whey. Her two baby boys. They were sleeping in their beds, safe and sound.

"* Guards." She called out for someone among the frogs here with her voice lowered so as to not wake up her children. Without a word, one of them walked to her side and placed down his spear. "* I will be scouting out the surface for a while. Blending into the surface, I can't keep carrying my two on my back all the time. I will look for prey, but if I don't come back too soon, I have spare venom in the fridge. You know what to do."

The guard that had come to her side, the most loyal among them, nodded. "* The same procedure as usual I suppose."

One more time, she stretched three of her arms into each of the boys' beds to pull the strewn around sheets back up to cover them properly, stroke their heads and give each a good night kiss before she left to make for the surface. The first part of exploring the surface was looking for new attire. She took one of the outer frogs with her, had her spiders carry them as far up as possible and made the rest of the way by foot. She was a Monster. Blending in would be trouble enough as it was. But it was hard not to draw attention to the enormous spider woman in a glittering, festive dress covered in frills. Toriel and her human had already showed her how to use public transport. And they had quite a bit of human money on their hands from when she lost control of Muffet. Five people died and three managed to buy her handmade spider pastries for exorbitant amounts of money. Any sane person would call it extortion. She confiscated the money Muffet made. Now she knew what to do with it.

The shops in the inner city were still long open. Lights in all different colours flashed down from the signs reading the names of all the different establishments there were here. People of all shapes and sizes walked the streets, mostly oblivious to one another. Tuffet spotted one young woman leave her bag hanging off her shoulder and proceeded to mimic that. She had to learn how her surroundings conducted themselves if she wanted to draw less attention. The names didn't say much about what the shops sold though, she could only guess from looking inside and seeing what the shop window dummies were wearing. They had humongous shops dedicated only to clothing for grown women at enormous prices. "* Astonishing.", she said to her silent guard. "* Women on the surface must be extremely rich to be able to afford all of this." They had to be some sort of elevated class that lived in luxury for all this to be made for them - not even to use - only to choose from. They had assortments of clothes in all shapes and colours. A lot of them didn't fit her because of her lengthy body, but the span of products they had was so wide, she found a lot for her to try out anyway.

The frog, quiet and expressionless as always, sat down in front of one of the cabins, while Tuffet went inside to change. She tried one outfit after the other and came out to present herself. Her guard's mimics were subtle, barely noticeable, but she had enough experience with them to tell how they reacted. "* Here is a first. I call it 90s Tuffet!" She came out wearing short jeans that revealed almost every bit of her lengthy legs, a tank top, sunglasses and a summer hat. "* Wrong season, I agree. How about vice principal Tuffet?" She came back out wearing business attire. A gray, smooth suit that covered all of her. But she wore it so tightly, that it put everything of her on display at the same time. She wanted to teach students, not seduce them. "* Too narrow I suppose. How about this? Casual wear Tuffet." This outfit seemed a lot more fitting to several of the weather patterns the surface could have. She came out with a red shirt wrapped in a small black leather jacket with short sleeves. She still had jeans on, but they covered the entirety of her legs. They were a bit saggy, but the staff assured her that they could fix that if she committed to buying them. Once tailored to fit, they lay so tight onto her shape, it honestly seemed more revealing than not wearing anything at all, because the contrasts highlighted everything. Why did human women spend so much money on clothes they may as well not wear?

Either way, this was perfect. This looked exactly like a lot of the lone women she saw walking the streets. Perfect to blend into the surroundings, at least as far as you could as a seven foot tall, purple spider creature with five eyes. She actually spent the money to buy a second jacket and shirt to have the staff tailor those later to have sleeves for all her arms. With her attempt at camouflage complete, next up was to find contacts. She needed locals who had an idea how to navigate the city. Preferably some that lived near it. And who had time to dedicate to helping her. And not to forget, they had to be interested in helping her.

* * *

He found himself on an empty field. Trees bloomed in the distance, the blades of grass glistened in the sunlight in a slow, little light show. A few metres away, a grass hopper got up and flew away. Then up above he saw it. In the bright blue summer sky, something was moving down. Wrapped in silken garments, a beautiful woman slowly glided his way from above. She was hanging upside down as she came closer. Her sweet embrace beckoned him, a brief touch of their lips electrified him, and from one moment to the next, with a surge through all of his mind, he slammed his eyes open and twitched. It was a dream. He was kissed by the muse, but it was merely a dream. Then again, he had to expect it to just be a dream. Floating women kissing you at random wasn't something that happened in every day life.

"* So ya woke up, sleepyhead." What was that? Jack looked around. He was in his dorm room. A tiny room that barely held enough space for his bed. It was so narrow, the shrink he had was reaching onto the surface of the bed. "* It's been time." He believed he was alone here, but he heard a voice as loud as day. As if there was someone else here.

He clenched his eyes shut, rubbed one of them and then pushed himself to sit up. "* Hello?"

"* Well hello to you, too."

"* Psst, ya dingus!"

Two voices. Two people were here in the room that nobody else fit in. At least not without hanging on the ceiling or something, and there was no-one there. "* What's going on? Hello? Who's there...is this some kind of prank?"

"* Prank! Ha! Classic!"

He got up to look around under the bed. "* Did you...?"

He was looking if there were any loudspeakers or anything that made this possible. He grabbed around the legs of the bed to see if it was somehow hidden and timed as if reacting to what he was doing, another voice spoke up. "* Hey! Hey stop! Aww why'd you touch that exact corner? Now I've got to start all over again." There was nothing there.

Without a word, he got up. "* Oh boy, now he's angry!" A third voice. And a gleeful one, too. Jack quickly unlocked the door and left it open. "* You can look around much as you like!" While the voice was talking, his neighbour was still snoring like he always did at this time.

"* I've got to find a new place if you keep destroying what I make here."

An older voice responded to the other voice. "* No! Stop! Darn moocher! Get the hell off my web!"

"* Okay, okay! No need to get all physical about it!" Did that older voice just say 'web'?

Jack looked around every corner he could spot to see if there was anything planted anywhere. But the door was locked when he was asleep, nobody could come in here. He was alone. So he closed the door again and dropped down on the bed with little understanding of the situation. "* So...did You just say web?"

The older voice responded to him. "* Yeah, those pesky kids keep trying to take away my place. And don't you kids dare 'cause I still got lotsa venom in these fangs!"

The first voice yawned. "* Callum, nobody wants your web, you live behind the heating. Nothing ever flies there unless they're running away from that guy. And he's never here except at nights."

Venom? Web? Fangs? Jack's eyes narrowed. "* You're trying to tell me you're spiders? This is some prank is it. There's got to be a microphone or something somewhere."

Several voices around him expressed their annoyance. "* There's no microphone! You know what? Don't believe me? Just wait. You always leave this room right? You always do every day and only come back to sleep. Just wait, take a walk outside or whatever it is you do, and see if you stop hearing us."

"* Yeah!"

He raised his hands and tried reeling in all these voices. "* All right, all right. Just give me some rest. I'm, way to worked up for this time at night." To be honest it wasn't even night. It was three o'clock in the morning. In three hours, he'd have to get up to catch the earlier classes.

"* Why! What's wrong, padre?"

"* I had a weird dream, and next thing I know, you guys..."

"* What dream?"

"* Yeah, tell us all about it."

He knew he was going to regret this. This was being recorded and he was going to have to deal with this for until people got bored of it. Or he never really woke up and this was part of a longer dream. "* I was kissed by a muse."

All the voices in the room burst out in laughter. "* A muse! A muse you call her! I can't, that's too precious!"

"* He only just got started and it's already hilarious!"

"* What's so funny? Reg? Reginald, are you behind this somehow?"

It took a while for the voices to calm down. "* Jokes aside, there's no Reg. Just us."

"* Then you want me to believe I just woke up one day and was able to talk to spiders?"

"* Yes. Apparently."

"* For a start, how can there be so many of you, I only ever saw the one." He stared at a tiny spider in a corner at the ceiling, opposite from the door.

"* Only complete idiots let humans see them. We're all over the place!"

"* Yeah."

"* That guy's retarded. Just grab a piece of paper, grab him and flush him!"

"* Just drown the guy!"

"* Yeah."

He was bombarded with all of this, so he played along. "* Wow, spiders are awful people."

"* We're predators that set up traps! We catch naive insects - and other spiders - tie them up and keep them constricted and in panic for ages until we put them out of their misery. You thought we'd all just be friendly neighbours?"

"* Guess you have a point. I also guess...that I'm heading to college early today." He left, took a quick shower, packed up everything he needed to study from somewhere else, headed out and locked the door behind him.

It was fun to play along for as long as it lasted. But now he was free. "* Gee, this early? Overeager much?"

There were still voices in the dorm hall. Once in a bigger hall, he took a deep breath. "* Get away from me!" He heard a terrified voice and looked around immediately to see if there was someone coming his way. There was nobody there. But the voices continued. In fact once he was done and had reached the building's larger entry hall, there were different ones and they were getting all the more frequent.

"* Aw, don't be like that. I just want a quick BITE!"  
"* Nooo."  
"* Hey girl, watch me dance!"  
"* Stupid locusts keep dragging all of my webs with them! I've got to find a way to catch them better."  
"* It's getting cold. I really need something to eat right now."  
"* Guys! Help! Please! Someone get me outta this human sugar stuff!"  
"* Buzz off, we've all got our own problems!"

He clenched his eyes shut and screamed: "* STOP!"

And for a moment, they actually stopped. "* Sheesh, what's his problem?"

And with this, the voices resumed. He paced away. Jack followed the road to college. Still hoping that this was some very elaborate prank, involving planting speakers everywhere, from his dorm room to right outside the dorm building. But it never stopped. There were very few out here in the snow, but they kept going, they were different voices every time and they were coming from everywhere around him. If they were coming from somewhere on his clothing or his bag, it would have been obvious, but he checked for the bag being the source and took off his jacket to walk away from it for a few seconds, too. Nothing worked. "* So you believe me now?" This voice was familiar. He recognized it from when he first woke up.

"* How? And how are you here then?"

"* Crawled in your bag before you left. Don't try finding me, you won't."

"* So how is this possible?"

"* Well there is one thing every spider you ask will tell you. 'Only he who bears the Widow's Kiss, can hear the spiders talk.' As for what that means , guess you'll just have to wait and see. Not sure if I can tell you." What was that even supposed to mean? It sounded like he knew. "* Maybe you should just make the best of it. See if talking answers any questions you might have about other stuff."

"* The Widow's Kiss. Is that what the Muse's kiss was?"

The spider suppressed a laugh. "*If you want to call her a muse, go ahead."

He just read some course material on a bench until the public studying halls unlocked so he could study properly there. And he was the only one. Quite a queue had gathered, and half the tables were taken almost immediately. With books and printouts laid out on the table, he picked up his phone and held it to his ear to pretend to be talking on the phone. "* So if I talk to you guys, can other people hear you guys?"

"* As I said. 'Only he who bears...'"

"* Okay, okay, okay." He didn't have to hear that again. "* So if you can tell me things about other stuff, you got anything interesting?"

"* Well..." A voice from under the table started. "* ...that guy two tables to your left." Jack followed the directions and saw two Orcs. One of them was browsing something on his phone, while the other seemed to have an audibly blocked nose. "* The sniffy one. That table he's sitting at, he sits at every day. Been here for three years straight, but is never seen doing actual work. What he does do though is selling cocaine to students who join him at his table. At least he used to until he started taking it himself. Then his supplier raised the price, he couldn't sell more goods than he was buying and basically he's dead broke, selling off all he has to continue sitting here and pretending like nothing's wrong."

Another spider he also couldn't see started speaking up. "* Oh, I got one, too. So that girl in the corner behind you..." Jack turned around to catch a glimpse of a girl with a scarf, tear sacs and eyes that stood out quite a bit. "* Yeah the one with the diabetes eyes. She suffers from depression. She's got the hots for a guy, but her girlfriend caught wind of that, spent months on end making her feel horrible over non-issues and talked badly about her behind her back in front of all her friends. Now, after placing all her value in her social life, she has no social life any more."

Jack sighed. "* Well I'd be depressed then, too."

"* She talked about that that one time when she broke down and caused a huge scene. Apparently she's got a shrink called 'Dr... Fleischer' and he's telling her to not to move on but to get back with that girl that destroyed her life."

"* Not a very good shrink then."

"* There's not that many people around yet. That's all the really juicy stuff I got right now." As time went on, more people came into the hall and the spiders had more stories to tell about their personal lives. And it didn't end with the study hall. Apparently every college professor he had classes with had some kind of alcohol or drug problem. Finally, when it was lunch time, he had an idea. He sat down next to his two rather interesting colleagues. Papyrus and Undyne. "* Just got to say...", one of the spiders continued. "* All the really strange stuff started happening when those Monsters came to the surface. And what's happened to you is really strange, isn't it?" He didn't answer. "* If anyone's going to have an idea about this, it's going to be those two."

"* So you two.", Jack finally spoke up to the two Monsters. "* Just curious. About you Monsters. There's all these different kinds of Monsters, right?" Busy with their food, they nodded. "* Just hypotheti - bare with me for a second, okay? Is there a kind of Monster that can give people the ability to talk to spiders?"

They both stopped, flashed a glance at each other, and then waved that off with wide-open mouths. "NO WAY."

"* Nah! Never heard of that." Okay then. After lunch, Jack's classes continued and he hadn't learned anything about why any of this was happening. When they were over, he felt that he had to get his mind off of this. And the span of options wasn't very broad. There were spiders to be heard wherever he went. Every hallway, every corner, every room, every street. They were absolutely everywhere. Winter be damned. And where they were, they were in droves. The chattering never stopped and it didn't show a sign of slowing down any time soon. On their first days here, the student council showed them a few places. One of which was a club that was always extremely crowded and where the house music that never stopped was playing so loud, unless you screamed into each others' ears as loudly as you could, there was no chance to understand what anyone said.

The inner city where this club was situated was so warm by comparison, there was no snow. It was like traveling back to Fall, coming here from the campus. And the voices wouldn't stop on his way there either. Even mere steps away from the entrance. "* Ah, looking to get a fix, are we?"

"* Don't tell me there's some drug thing going on there, too."

One spider that must have been crawling up the wall next to him hooked in. "* Of course. That whole place is one big meth hub. These student council guys show up every year to show the place to freshmen. Reason is one of them gets a cut from all the sales."

"* Oh god, why?"

"* Whaddya think why the place is the way it is? With those flashing lights in the dark, you can't see 'em dealing. With all the noise, you can't hear 'em. Perfect for getting vulnerable freshmen hooked and addicts make for great repeat customers for the drugs and the drinks. That way they can do it out in the open without having to worry about the wrong people finding out. From time to time, cops show up, but the owners cover it up for anyone that's being looked at. They'll tell you that they're running a perfectly legitimate business at the front. In the back, they're manufacturing the stuff."

"* That's awful." Jack figured it was best if he didn't buy or accept anything here. Now that he knew what that spider had told him, who knew what else they put in their drinks? The inside was just the way it always was. The air was sticky from sweat, evaporated alcohol and artificial smoke was added for effect. Even from outside, you could see the deformed, undulating cluster of people moving about to the noise that drowned out anything else. No matter how loudly they tried, no spider could talk to him in here. As long as he was in here, he was surrounded by people, but he was left alone with his thoughts.

Standing around would have been too weird, so he started pretending to dance along with all the people that were squashing him just from the place being as crammed as it was. As time went on though, something caught his attention. He felt the front side of a very, very tall woman brush against his back. Out of curiosity, he turned around, but when he did, there was nobody there that matched what he felt. Mere seconds later, there it was again. Right behind him. He turned around again. No very tall woman. Then he felt someone pinch his back. When he turned around, all he saw was some guy that was nearby for a while, but oblivious to him. He tried - against the noise of the club, asking him if he wanted something, but the guy didn't seem to know what Jack was talking about.

Eventually, Jack was too weirded out to stay and left. And upon leaving and walking down a street, he stopped. He took a deep breath and listened. Something had changed. He could hear it. Above the sound of driving cars and water dropping onto unshapely rooftops. "* Silence. No spiders talking."

"* I'm still talking."

Oh great, the one from his dorm room. "* You stuck by all the way to now?"

"* Yeah, been hiding in your jacket. Got a lot of holes on the inside I can stowaway in. And I've gotta get back, too. Ben's been staring at my web too much for me to leave it alone for too long. But hey! You're not alone. There's someone right behind you."

Jack didn't know what to say. He raised an eyebrow. "* There is?"

"* Yeah, she's right behind you."

"* She is?" He immediately turned around. There was nobody there. "* Liar."

"* Just open your eyes and move faster. She's there, I swear."

He indulged him one more time, and as usual, there was nobody there. "* Okay, now you're just poking fun at me."

"* You just have to turn around faster. Every time you turn around, she moves so you can't see her."

"* Hum." Jack decided to give listening to the spider one more shot. He looked around, deliberately guiding whoever was behind him towards a dead end, which he the slowly wandered into. When he was more or less at the wall, he turned around. "* Gotcha!" But he was staring at a wall. "* Oh."

"* Nice try." Indeed there was a female voice. He expected another spider. And when he turned around, he shrugged together from the shock. There was another spider. Or a person? Something in-between. Five unsettling eyes stared down at him from easily a whole head's worth of difference in height. Long fangs hung out of her mouth when she grinned at him. Even in the dark, she had a blue-purplish complexion on her smooth skin. One arm was holding her handbag in place. One more was resting on a wall to her side. Two more hung down behind her back. And another pair hung down in front of her. An insanely large, perfectly combed body of black hair hung along her matching black leather jacket. "* Hmhmhm." She suppressed a chuckle. "* Have you been enjoying yourself today?" Jack was at a loss for words. Merely held his hands open in a defensive manner and slowly backed off, quickly finding himself with his back to the wall. Who was this? What was this?

* * *

"To help survive with and provide for their remaining offspring, Whisperers of both sexes gain an ability upon losing the fellow parent of their children, called 'The Widow's Kiss'. It allows them to turn people that aren't Whisperers into conduits for their telepathic abilities. Upon getting accustomed to it, they then share the ability to have access to the memories of any spiders around them, as well as to control their thoughts and movements. But until then, a lot of effort goes into getting there. At first, a creature of average complexity - say a human for instance - needs some time for their brain to learn to separate the wheat from the chaff. To differentiate between information that is in any way relevant and all spiders' immediate thoughts. Then, processing. Having mental contact and control over surrounding spiders is a lot more taxing on a nervous system than you might first think.

For a start, it takes practise to make them control their movements by themselves. So control takes a while to learn. On top of that, even if you control a spider's movements in detail - they have eight legs, all of them need nerves dedicated to steering them properly.

Then on top of that, processing information received. A spider doesn't have any knowledge of behavioural conventions among regular-sized surface-dwellers and they don't speak any languages. To a Whisperer or one of their conduits, a spider is essentially just hardware. A tiny piece of hardware that records everything it sees, feels and hears like a bug. But making sense of it, that's up to the conduit or the Whisperer themselves. So the conduit's processing power first needs to be dedicated to translating everything any surrounding spiders heard to make sense of it.

As you can guess, all of that and more - if taken in at it's whole immediately - would give a regular human brain constant sensory overload, cause epileptic fits and probably overtax their short-term memory. Which is why their brains already do a lot of subconscious filtering at the start. The way that most humans deal the Widow's Kiss' effects, is to project personalities onto the spiders that surround them, each based on the thoughts and memories they receive from them and then to hallucinate those personalities talking to them. Some humans even wind up realizing that they're hallucinating, because the spiders that talk to them all happen to know things they thought but didn't say out loud."


	53. The Ruthless Broodmother

.

Beyond SAVEing

Chapter 03

The Ruthless Broodmother

* * *

A lengthy spider creature covered her mouth and chuckled. It had an allure to his eyes the way her shoulder and arms moved when she did. "* Speechless? I am flattered." It had to be a spider creature. That was what made sense considering what was happening. And her number of arms matched it. And she had a lot more eyes than even a lot of Monsters. "* Oh come on. The barrier has been gone for almost half a year now. Do I surprise you this much?"

"* I...I..." Jack realized that for a moment, his mouth was hanging open. "* I'm sorry, I guess you just startled me..." He reached out to shake one of her many hands. "* Hi, I'm Jack."

She chuckled again, tilted her head slightly to the side and smiled with two of her eyes closed. Three of them were still watching his every move though. She clearly separated function and form and accounted for both at the same time. "* I'm the one that should be sorry. It's just that - an acquaintance of mine was lost. And I don't visit the surface this much." He would believe her that in an instant. "* I'd like to help look for her myself, but I need some local knowledge to find my way around. And some other acquaintances you might know, told me you're always helpful, that you were interested in the missing humans case." Papyrus and Undyne. They were Monsters. She must have been referring to them.

"* Wait..." This was a bit much. He wanted to focus on what mattered to him now. "* The spiders...the Muse...was that you?"

She stopped right in the middle of her explanation to suppress a laugh. "* A muse...", she mumbled. "* Yes, you could say I have a thing or two to do with spiders." She stepped back, and softly stretched out her arms. From all corners of the street, a black and brown flood of spiders stepped out here into the cold inner city concrete - too cold for them to be all over the place like this, but too warm for it to be covered in snow. In a coordinated fashion, they spanned open a thick cobweb that the slender woman let herself drop onto like a hammock, followed by the spiders carrying her up to the roof above her by that cobweb. "* Spiders can be very useful. They know anything that is said, done and seen. Even now, you cannot step anywhere without a spider more than a metre away. You will know anything that goes on in any part of a house, without entering it to begin with. If you were serious about taking an interest in that missing humans case, do go ahead, use this gift to your advantage." The moment she was done, she disappeared around a chimney and left him alone in the street, as if she had never been there to begin with.

At this point, Jack wasn't sure if anything around him was real. Maybe he was dreaming, maybe he was in some trance and only imagining all of this. Either way, instead of doing what was probably more reasonable and going back to the dorm to get some sleep, he got out his phone and looked up where he could find the local precinct. He really felt like helping with this missing humans case now. If anything, the spiders' voices were as real as that woman just now, regardless of what applied to both of them. The precinct was a public building, not hidden at all and open to anyone. There wasn't even someone at the entrance. Anyone could have waltzed in. He didn't need to though. On nearby roads and around the building, he hung around until he was sure nobody had an angle to watch him from, so he leaned against a wall of a neighbouring building and simply asked. "* So, anyone here?"

From the wall and all over the place, voices responded. "* Sure!"  
"* I'm right here."  
"* Never left."  
"* Just came over."  
Even out here in the cold of the winter, spiders were to be found in the walls, wherever there was something to crawl onto or into to shelter away from the cold. It really was a bit like a whole world, invisible to the untrained eye. "* What's up, boss?"

He couldn't let anyone hear him talk, otherwise, he'd come off as a crazy person, so he whispered as quietly as he could. "* Does anybody know what the cops found out about the missing humans case?"

"* Nah, never hang out there."  
"* Those people are cops?"  
"* Yeah, the ones that are all dressed the same."  
"* Where?"  
"* That building over there."

"* Hey! Wait up!" One voice came from the precincts direction his way, moved to a tree and then stayed there. "* I know about that! One officer was talking about it for a week or so, then the police chief told him to archive the investigation. Apparently the officer was upset about that, because archiving it that way is the cops' way of canceling an investigation without officially canceling it. That way nobody can pick it up if new evidence pops up unless the chief says so."

"* Really. So they're not doing anything any more. If you want to find out more, you'll have to make do with what I got."

"* Hey! If you got more, just come right here, there's space for you!" The spider in his bag was talking to the other one.

Jack was a bit disgruntled. "* Hey, are you just inviting strangers to come live in my bag?"

"* You want to find out more about the missing humans for that spider lady, right? This guy lives right in the main hall of the precinct. If anyone knows, he knows."

"* All right." He placed his bag on the ground for a few seconds, and then picked it back up. "* You set?"

"* I jumped right over the moment you said that."

"* You guys jump?"

"* All spiders jump. You thought only jumping spiders do that? They're the best jumpers, so they show it off, but when you humans aren't looking, we all jump around. It's how we hunt when there's no prey flying into our webs."

Jack raised his eyebrows. "* That's...disturbing." He figured it was better not to stay here for too long. It was already night after all. He talked to it whenever he was outside and took notes on his phone. The spider that had hopped on knew several street names and names of victims that were never found. It was a start. Anything more than this was too much for the day. He went back home and simply told the spiders in his dorm room to shut up so he could sleep. Not that that lasted for long.

He was still very exhausted when the alarm clock sounded. "* Can we talk again now?"  
"* Yeah, kinda boring like this."  
"* Hey! I caught a fruit fly!"  
"* Good for you."

He ignored them and packed his stuff to head to his classes. After the first one, he had one empty spot in his schedule, which he spent studying in one of the public study halls. "* Not the most hands-on approach you have, is it?" He shrugged together in shock to see that woman from last night look down from the chair right next to him. He caught himself staring at those fangs while thinking about how she got here. His table was arranged exactly so that he saw anyone who came in walk right past him. Yet her, he never saw. Did she crawl along the ceiling to get here and nobody noticed? "* This doesn't look like it refers to solving crimes at all." She pointed at a math problem he was working on. True, advanced mathematics didn't have an awful lot to do with learning police protocols or resolving dangerous situations, but then again, there were those that went into forensics for whom this was part of it. "* Did you find anything out last night?"

"* Actually, I did." He took a deep breath and avoided looking at her. Even with what little time he had actually been around her, this woman so much as being around him took a lot of getting used to and consciously calming himself down. "* I got a few addresses. But they're probably red herrings."

"* What are you waiting for, then?", the smiling woman plainly asked. "* Are you telling me you want to become a guard or a policeman but you think playing with numbers is more important than doing actual police work?"

She had a point. This was mandatory, but would only be of use for people in forensics. This spider business, who knew how long it would last? It felt indeed a lot more exciting to go do the police's job rather than to sit here learning things that had little to nothing to do with what he was going for. "* You know what? You're right." She had something about her. Something very convincing that he couldn't put a finger on. "* I'll go check them out right away. And - oh..." She placed a torn piece of paper on the table.

"* I don't really use it, but for you, I'll make an exception." She flashed him a little cell phone. A really old model and a cheap looking one at that. But hey, it was a phone. She wasn't completely cut off from the rest of the world. "* And one more thing. The Acquaintance that was lost is a yellow lizard. Remember to look for a yellow lizard." If Undyne and Papyrus were the acquaintances, then Alphys would be the one that was 'lost'. That would fit the description of being a yellow lizard. He nodded and proceeded to wrap up on this math problem. Before he knew what was what, she was out of his sight and once Jack was sure she was probably gone, he packed up everything again and took the next train downtown. The first address was in a district mostly frequented by Monsters, Orcs and other non-humans. Right next to a theatre founded by a robot and ran by Monsters, stood an abandoned pizza restaurant. This was it. This was the address. But there was nothing there. And only from relic webpages and archives could he even figure that something was ever there. Sure, the tiles and sinks and so on were still there inside, but it was abandoned completely. Most machinery was removed, all the tables were gone, but from small dents in the floor, you could figure where they used to stand. The walls both in the dining hall and the kitchen were dirty and a mixed smell of rot and other things hung over the air. If there ever was something here, this place was sweeped clean without actually cleaning it.

He was glad to be outside when he left. The air of the wet streets with cars drawing trails of fumes after them was still more refreshing than the air in that place. The next address was a small office building turned storehouse and eventually abandoned completely, situated in a run-down ex-industry district. A desolate place to be in. A piece of paper hung on the front door, saying 'Sans, this has to stop'. He remembered Papyrus mention having a brother called 'Sans', but there was no guarantee that this was the same one. Inside, it was more or less the same as in the pizza restaurant. Sticky, sickening air, dirty walls, only small pieces of torn-up carpet floors were left on the floor, there was a complete lack of furniture, the place was empty and whoever left made efforts not to leave anything behind. This time, he asked the spiders and got a response that gave him a little bit of insight. "* They cleared out this place over a month ago. It was really weird. They had crates that rumbled on their own, and inside, people were coming out of them. Then the guy in the suit got a call, they filled the people back into crates and then just up and left."

"* And uhm - a lizard, right. A yellow lizard. Did they have one of those?"

"* Nope, no lizards."

He spent the trip to his next stop in silence. The implications messed with his mind. He got these addresses from the police themselves. So they had these addresses all along. And this place was only left one to two months ago. If between getting these addresses and that time, a single one had gone to check it out - no perimeters - no warrants - just went there to see, they would have stumbled onto them. That was how little effort was made, under orders of the chief of police no less. Why would the chief order the officers to stay away from the big fish anyway, when they spent so much time going after speeders and other small fry? Was this business as usual? Avoid and cover up the really big crimes and 'simply be'? He was getting second thoughts about becoming a police officer.

The third address was similar to the second. It was set in what must have once been a beautiful suburb, now only a sad spot in the outskirts of the city, with decaying houses, some had their roof or a wall break and cave in. He was pretty certain he saw a junkie with a neon green Mohawk walk into one of them. Most of the houses that were inhabited at all, had Orcs walk up and down in the streets in front of them. The house in question was a storehouse that was built more recently. It was only slightly less dirty and it's walls were covered in posters and advertisements stuck over one another, all of which were coming off in various places. And the spiders told him the exact same thing they did at the second stop. Shady stuff was going on, they left and sweeped the place nearly two months ago. Again, had a single officer come to the address they already had, some serious discoveries would have been made.

By then, he was becoming more cynical. Ever so faintly, it reeked of a cover-up, but it seemed implausible. If the addresses were obtained but this was not to be discovered on purpose, then why leave those addresses in a place where a spider could see them? Why not erase any records of all of it? That would only make sense if...if this was indeed business as usual. If this chief had no reason to worry about something being found out, because it wasn't the only case of this happening and it never was found out. Or, as he figured much later on, they knew that no major news outlet would talk about this, even if it came out. If some cover-up was involved, that would mean it was so normal, they were getting really careless, because they could safely expect nobody to do something about it. This was the state of law enforcement.

The fourth stop was in an Orcish neighbourhood. Moreso than the last one. Most of the area was covered either in extremely low-quality shops, the kind that sold stakes at less than a single Kadmo - the continental currency unit, or apartment complexes housing humongous amounts of recently arrived Orcs. Here, the address led to a pretty far-out building. A storehouse with closed-off garages. The outside concrete design looked a bit like that of a community centre. But the doors were closed. He leaned against a wall, pulled out his phone to pretend to talk on the phone, and asked the spiders. "* So, anyone here?" After a slew of spiders reporting in, he cut to the chase. "* So what's inside there? Anything interesting?"

"* Oh boy, is there? Several guys with armor and guns."  
"* Yeah, and metal boxes, loads of them. And they carry around people with those."  
"* And there's this guy in a suit with pointy ears who notes down their names and descriptions."

Bingo! "* What about lizards. Is one of the people in the crates a yellow lizard?"

"* Nope."

Well it was still something. If there were people that were armed in there, he preferred to quickly back off from here before he was heard and to move around a corner. When he was sure he was out of hearing range, he immediately dialed for the lengthy spider lady. "* Hello? I think I found something." He hasted across the street to look for some place to wait for her at where he still had the building in his sight. There was a little diner with leather benches. "* Here's the address. Ask someone to show you exactly where that is." He gave her the address, went inside, opened a fridge to pull out a sealed bottle of water and placed it on the counter to buy it. Then he settled down in the corner with his unopened drink.

What ensued next was over an hour of tensely sitting in an Orcish diner with Orcs walking in and out, staring at the building, while not pointing his head at it. When he least expected it, the door opened and the woman he waited for arrived. "* I hear you have something to show me." At once, he got up and led her over to the little parking lot at the building's side where they were at an angle at which it was hard to see them from the windows and impossible to see them from the front door. "* Ah, I see what you mean. I can see the guards, the humans. But she isn't in there. Nevertheless, good work." Jack froze, his eyes sprang wide open and he tensed in places he wished he didn't when he felt a tiny speck be planted at his cheek. From across the street, from every building, every store, every closed off block of concrete, all around him, something moved. Out of every corner on the roads, between the roads, from pots with wilted, half-broken trees, from inside and outside of the entire block, everything he could see, something came crawling in black and brown masses. And when the masses were close enough, it appeared to be what he expected. Spiders. Loads of them. Swarms of a scale he had never thought possible crawled out of their holes in the entire district and gathered in this very place around them. Within seconds, the parking lot, the street in front of the building, everything was covered in them. Even out of his clothing and his bag they were crawling onto the concrete and into the building in front of them. There were so many of them, you could hear the combined volumes of their inaudible movements be loud enough to manifest as a disturbing crackling that must have come from an army of eight-legged creatures stepping at a rapid pace with every leg.

The mass started covering less of the streets and more and more of the building. Not only in the front door, in all of the walls, especially above the high-up windows, they found little holes and crevasses through which to enter and disappear inside. He expected the spectacle to attract onlookers, but the only one he saw, was running away from it in panic. In spite of it being as enormous as it was, more and more of the swarm vanished, all of it filling the building. Jack was convinced he could faintly hear a voice from inside. Not the spider-voice-kind of voice, a regular human voice shouting or screaming. And sure enough after a few minutes, the black mass started spilling out of the windows and back out through all the holes it entered in. In straight paths, but walking over each other, the swarms all crawled along the entire stretch - each back to where they came from, back into all the buildings, all the pots on balconies, all the little edges and breaks in the road. The force of the swarm was so strong, the spiders burst open and ripped out the front doors on their way out. Calmly and without a word, the lady placed one foot in front of the other, and upon looking at the ground, Jack quickly noticed that their feet were being avoided. The spiders walked clear circles around her feet and around his. And when he raised one foot to place it further ahead, the spiders moved to accommodate.

By the time they reached the front door, most of their outside surroundings were back to the way they were before. A disturbing smell came from inside the building. All the walls were covered in cobwebs, as was the floor. With the door now open and the two of them walking inside, he was now certain that he could hear screams of terror coming from upstairs. On the floor, a man was lying on his back. What little skin was not covered in a black uniform, or dark green kevlon armour, had taken on some insanely unhealthy-looking colours and was so torn-open, covered so much in little scratches, pinches and imperfections, it was impossible to tell what he looked like before. One of his eyes was ripped out and the other was also destroyed beyond repair. He lay there, motionlessly. Not even breathing. When the spider lady placed her foot on his chest, the chest simply gave in, as if the inside was more fluid than solid. Before she moved on, she turned around. "* If you ever want an opportunity to arm yourself, now is the time." She pointed at one of the two firearms that lay on the floor next to the corpse. Apparently on top of wearing expensive armour, this person was also heavily armed.

If he was in any normal state, Jack would have declined and shied away from risking getting caught and charged for possession, but something inside him just made him obey her suggestion immediately. He grabbed one of the shorter ones that fit right into his bag and arranged it in a way in which it was still possible to carry it, as well as a spare magazine that the dead man had on him. On the way up the stairs, there were more bodies. Similarly devastated and covered in spider bites to the previous one. The screams became louder and louder and when Jack followed the lady upstairs, he found the people that were screaming. Cowering in a corner of a wide but not very high, empty room, was a whole bunch of people in all shapes and colours. The lady scraped some webs off the walls to reveal a light switch which she flipped. Humans, Orcs, Naga, men, women, adults, children, there were at least two dozens of them and they were all pinning themselves against walls opposite to him and the woman that just came in. All looking away, some closing their eyes, all with desperate looks on their faces, and most sobbing and begging for their lives.

The slender lady stood in the middle of the room and talked to all of them at once. "* Which one of you was kept here the longest." A little boy, couldn't have been more than ten stepped forward. "* All right, which one was kept here the second longest?" This time a grown male naga stepped forward. "* You will come with me. The rest of you, go. Go out there and enjoy your lives." She didn't need to say anything twice. She kept an eye on the naga, keeping his vertical pupils fixated on the looming creature that approached him, while the rest stormed outside in panic. Without batting as much as an eye, she proceeded to lead jack and the former captive into a different room. Here, there actually was furniture. A table with a computer. Beside the mouse lay ten little wallets and purses. "* I found those on the guards. Those will help us find my acquaintance. In particular, I am hopeful for this one." She picked up one wallet that stood out from the others, in that it was wrapped in smooth crocodile leather. "* The well-dressed one had this one." She pointed at a corpse on the floor, that wasn't wearing armour, but a suit. The spider lady opened it up and spread out all the little business cards and ID cards. And then picked one up. "* Hmm, diversity coordinator for human progress at the Rosenberg Foundation. I think we have found his occupation. Or at least, his official occupation. I doubt any of this is in his public job description."

He finally had something to add. "* Sounds like some kind of social worker occupation. What is this foundation?"

The lady smiled. "* That would be up to you to find out, would it not? You!" She called to the naga who was already slowly inching away. "* Help me with this, won't you?" While Jack bagged the wallets, the lady and the naga got to disconnecting the computer and taking it with them. Jack was wondering how they were going to smuggle this through the city, but the moment they stepped back outside, he heard - and felt - a rumble in a disturbing pattern. Down along the outside walls came a spider as big as a car. It had a lot of bags strung and strapped to it's abdomen and the two carrying the computer placed and secured it in one of the bags, before the spider left again.

"* What was that?" He asked after an extended pause.

"* A pet."

A this point, he preferred just to go with it. But their departure was soon interrupted by a literal congregation of Orcs, led by a pastor still wearing his robes. "* What happened here? Did you summon the devil?" He was about to begin shouting some probably superstitious but reasonable accusations at the lady, but found himself scratching his arm before he could even start his sentence. "* Wait, what's..." Just like before, spiders crawled out of every corner onto the group. Scratching off the armies of tiny attackers, all of the Orcs were soon screaming for help and calling her a witch as they left. The Jack and the Naga, quickly used to the lady's weird antics, followed without a word. Before they went to the station, they passed by a store to pick up some cheap clothes, with the spider lady leaving quite a tip after getting the naga something to wear that wasn't filthy and torn like the rags he was wearing. Already on their trip further into the city, Jack picked out his phone to look up what these business cards gave him. The one from the expensive-looking wallet led him to the exact same foundation Alphys had stumbled onto long before. It was the exact same one, but he of course couldn't notice that. I did.

Downtown, she had the two of them stand in an area far within the narrow corners between tall, dirty apartment complexes. "* Now, excuse me. I have someone to reel in, who is going rogue again." Oh god, if she commanded giant spiders, what kind of havoc was one such spider creature wreaking in the middle of the city. Instead of spiders carrying her, the lady proceeded to taking off her shoes right then and there, as well as the pair of gloves that covered one pair of hands. She then placed one hand on a wall. The hand seemed stuck to it, and she pulled herself a little upwards before placing her next hand on the wall, and the next and the next. Including her feet, she was soon crawling up the wall on all 'eights' and within a few seconds, vanished around the corner of the rooftop.

After a few seconds of silence, Jack faced the still perplexed Naga. This all must have been very, very strange to him. Hell, it was for Jack and he had been exposed to - well her for over a day. "* So, I'm sure you've been through a lot." Judging from the slight tremble in the Naga's facial features, Jack's assessment was a massive understatement. A nod was the only response he got. Soon, a horde of spiders came around from several angles and spun and carried up a thick set of cobwebs, which then, at the top of the roof, the slender woman stepped on dragging someone - something else, with her, holding each of it's six wrists in a grip with one of her own hands. This one wasn't an actual spider, but - presumably - a Monster like her. She was much shorter than the slender lady. She also had ebon hair, but it was short and tied together with two ribbons on her head. And she wore a set of very old-fashioned clothing. She clearly wasn't willingly following, but the taller of the two was visibly stronger.

"* Now, now, Muffet. Be a nice girl and say hello to Jack and Rasheed." Hesitantly, Muffet nodded and greeted the two of them and once she was kept here long enough to follow without being physically dragged, the lady let go and led them back to the station. They took the trains they needed to get to Shoneon Village. A village built up from practically nothing, consisting of bizarre houses between streets that bizarre creatures wandered about on. It was almost as strange as any minute of the day since the slender lady gave him this 'gift'. They were led down through an empty door frame through a little palace, followed by the interior of a house that simply stood open for anyone passing through, and eventually took a lift to a particularly hot place within the Underground, only to follow a far-off, winded path down and away into a much cooler, darker destination.

In dark, damp caves, the walls were more and more covered in webs. And in fact, she led the two of them onto an entire platform over a bottomless hole, made entirely by cobwebs, which a swarm of spiders proceeded to pull and move downwards. They only descended the platform onto an even deeper cave, just as dark as the previous one. Here, they came across a big wooden house, made of very narrow, outside visible tunnels. The outside and inside was guarded by armored frogmen. Croaksaders as she called them. And when they greeted her, he was finally given her name. Mrs.. Tuffet. Mrs.. Tuffet and her daughter little Miss Muffet. "* Let me see the little ones." She disappeared off into one of the many hallways that her dining room led to for a few minutes. "* They are all right." After seeing her staff, he was surprised to see her cook all of them dinner with her own hands. What that dinner was, was an entirely different matter. He wasn't sure what it was, and he only ate very hesitantly. It was slightly salty and...crunchy.

The silence on this extended trip gave him time to look up the foundation that business card was pointing to. On one hand he found it's website. It seemed to be about humanitarianism, foreign aid and charities of all kinds, especially shelters, children's homes and generally setting up places to serve as homes for people who had nowhere else to go. Then he found a very recently swollen up range of forums and websites spelling out conspiracy theories and gathering material about human trafficking in relation to this foundation. A notion that under other circumstances, he would have just waved away. But they just found a storage facility of a human trafficking ring and the most well-dressed person guarding the 'merchandise' had ID that tied him to that same foundation as an employee. A growing, queasy feeling took hold of him as he browsed all of this. He didn't want to believe it. He wished it was false. But what he had at his hands said otherwise. And instead of the entire staff of the foundation, the conspiracy theorists seemed to tie it all to one single name. "* Valerie Rosenberg.", he responded to her question if he could put a single name to all of it. "* That would be Valerie Rosenberg. But I don't think she's the right person to talk to. I don't think we can."

He tried to allude to her being a hard-to-get-to person, but Mrs.. Tuffet was left cold by this. She smiled in a way that made her fangs stand out more than they already did. "* There are always ways to talk to someone."

On a refreshingly cold Wednesday morning, she read one of her favourite humanist works of prose, when she was interrupted. "* Madam." Seated in her crocodile leather chair covered in the finest of furs, Valerie only turned her head as much as she needed to shoot an impatient glare at one of her servants. The servant, dressed in a perfectly clean smoking and with a small broom to dust any surface at any given time, stood next to her with an opened letter. Jason, her letter opener. She had a human letter opener, trained and equipped to open any delicate mail to see if it had any bombs, anthrax or similar hazards attached to them. "* This one may be of concern to you."

She tried to wave him off. "* Just take it to Howard." One of her personal secretaries.

"* I would really recommend at least hearing it out." He showed the surface to her. The letter was an obvious blackmailing letter, consisting of cut-and-pasted-together letters from newspapers. Dear Mrs.. Valerie Rosenberg. Recently, it has come to my attention that you have been running an operation that someone of my concern has gotten tangled up in. After an extensive investigation, I have collected all material needed to make a case, both as a class action lawsuit, and for exposés, with black-on-white proof, footage of storage of human resources, eyewitness and victim testimonies and any documents necessary..."* Curses! The raided storehouse with the strangely puffed-up bodies for guards."

Her butler continued to read the letter. "* I am a reasonable person though. I will trade all material and information I have, as well as my silence for a sum of..."

Now with a bit more erratic elements in her gestures, she tried to wave this trouble away again. "* Just pay them off then. Be done with it. And then find their names and kill them when they don't expect it."

"* I'm sorry, Madam, but it would appear there is no concise sum. Only an address and a time."

He continued finishing with the letter. "* I will require you to visit me at this location personally and to bring no-one else with you. Compliance will be met with cooperation."

"* That makes it all the easier then." She snorted. She was much more annoyed now that she knew they could have handled it without her involvement. "* Just send some of my security to that location and take them out. Make it appear like a botched mugging or something of the sort."

"* Madam, I wouldn't bother you with this unless we had already tried that." He picked out a memory stick and attached it to the tablet on the Elf's table. He opened up a video from the body camera of one of her security guards. "* I must ask you to take heart. It is something rather disturbing to behold." It was footage from a body cam. It depicted a road leading onto an empty and unused area, fenced off and containing the opening that led into a cave inside a rock or a little mountain, the foot of which the location was destinated at. "* This is the address in the letter." It was in the middle of the night, so the lighting was suboptimal for seeing everything that was happening. Regardless, the staff members got out of their car and approached the cave. The one the footage was from stopped right outside of it and called for one of the other ones not to get ahead of himself. The other ignored this and marched right inside. By the time he was so far away, you could only hear his voice through the loudspeaker on one of the staff members' radio, it was too late. They heard him scream something incoherent for a second, followed by silence. The two remaining security guards gave each other a nod and drew and released their firearms. The other security guard was only a few steps ahead, when something from inside approached him. Something dark and hairy came crawling right outside at an insane speed. Several of them in fact. Spiders - each so big, their abdomens were at the height of the guards' waists - sped at them and grabbed first the other guard, then the one the footage was from. Judging by their voices, they were dead within seconds of being first jumped at and bitten. The rest of the footage was the two getting dragged into the cave with the camera, then the camera, facing the dark, being dragged back outside by one of the spiders. Several armed security officers had been deployed to take out whoever this goody-two-shoes citizen journalist was and were attacked and killed by giant spiders. "* Should we notify law enforcement?"

"* No!", Valerie screamed. "* What if someone asks what it is I am being blackmailed with?" Worse yet, what if they found and arrested the Monster - it had to be one of those Monsters - and found whatever it had on her. "* Very well. If the usual approach won't work, throwing money at it will." If this was found, she was dead anyway. There was no way the Archons would let her live and risk her singing about her foundation and other operations it was involved in. Or the Koppenbergs, or the Birkenbaums. If she was arrested, sooner or later, at some point, someone who could afford it, would consider her too much of a threat not to have her 'suicided'. The first limousine her driver could mobilize, she took to the place it transpired at herself. Two guards accompanied her, but she asked them not to come. If three were easily overpowered, then two wouldn't do much either. Out in the cold, she stood with little idea of how to go about this. Just outside the cave, she started shouting. "* Is anyone in there?"

Very faintly, almost lost in the wind blowing along her lengthy ears, a female voice spoke up. "* Why don't you come and find out?" So indeed someone was here. And she had a recording of that person's voice. But that would be little good if they spread the evidence they had before she had her tracked down and removed. Valerie felt nauseous. She never took these risks. She never took risks full stop. Risks were for lessers. For humans, Orcs, Naga and for Monsters. She was above this. It felt so denigrating, responding to and following up on the invitation of a non-Elf. Trembling from the cold, she wrapped her furs a little more tightly around her arms and tread ahead. Deep into the dark, with nothing other than a torch and a phone. "* You proved less cooperative than expected. But you arrived at last." She heard something she couldn't put a finger to. A faint screeching, consisting of unheard of amounts of tiny creatures crawling past her and immediately creating a coordinated web between her and the cave exit. She could hear the guards she came with, shouting and firing their weapons, but similar interrupted screams to the ones on the footage suggested they were already dead.

"* I am here." She looked around and tried to make out...anything actually. But there was nothing This cave led deeper and deeper and wherever her torch pointed at, tiny spiders just happened to be crawling out of the way. "* I can offer you any sum. You want money? I can make you richer than you could imagine."

"* Oh, it isn't money that I'm after." The voice was now much clearer. And right behind her. She twisted around and pointed the light in various directions, but there was nothing there. In one moment there wasn't. In the next, something zoomed down and right in front of her face, a roughly human-like face was looking at her. It was upside down, and it had five pitch black eyes, with faint pink orbs glowing within them, all of which pointed straight at her. It licked it's lips and bore it's long fangs. "* Pardon the insincerity in my message...", she continued. "* ...but what I am really after is information."

The shock weakened Valerie's legs to the point of giving in. She almost fell on her back and with little regard for the spiders she was touching in the process, crawled backwards and away from the purple woman on all fours. "* Please...what do you want to know?" She had a knife, but the spiders must have been somehow following her command. If she made any mistake and struck too early, they could get her and a single bite would kill her. "* Economic secrets? Foreign intelligence? Paradise papers? Anything, but please, spare me!" She shuffled around to sit on her knees and put her hands together in a praying fashion while she continued to beg to be spared.

But her intuition told her something she didn't want t hear. It wasn't working. The Monster picked up the torch and made her face visible. And there wasn't a shred of empathy. With humans , this would have been easy. At this point, she would long have persuaded them to give her some breathing space, so she could come up with a plan on how to trick or kill them. But there wasn't the least bit of leniency in any of these five eyes. There was a smile, but apart from that, there wasn't the least bit of anything. "* Doctor Alphys. Her name is Doctor Alphys. I am told the missing humans have something to do with her. And I found out that you have something to do with the missing humans to say the least."

Seeing that her attempts at begging her way out of this weren't working, a creeping panic was taking hold of Valerie. "* No, please don't." For once in sincerity, she was breaking down in tears and facing the swarmed ground. "* Don't make me give away that kind of secret. You don't know what they do to people that do! Don't you care the least bit, please, please we have been through so much. The six mi..."

"* Stop." She felt the Monster place a finger on her forehead. "* I couldn't care less. I just want to know one thing. Where is doctor Alphys?"

She was crying for her life. For once, sincerely crying. This once. She was so humiliated. She could already feel herself die. Die from resignation. It was as if she could physically feel it. "* You want that one Monster?"

"* Yes."

"* And no-one else?"

"* Well I heard about another Monster that was with her."

"* All right." She sobbed at the mere embarrassment of kneeling at the feet of non-Elf. "* I will tell you where you find her." Once she was done giving her an exact time and location on where to find her, she continued to beg for her life. "* Now you will let me go, right? I can go home again and be left alone?"

The smile on the face of the spider didn't go away. "* I am sorry. Go home? I don't think so. I can't deny my little boys fresh meat, when it wanders so willingly into our midst." Six arms shot straight towards Valerie and forced her onto her back. Spiders from all over the cave swarmed her and started wrapping most of Valerie's body in cobwebs. And once straddled, Mrs.. Tuffet moved in to bury her fangs in Valerie's neck. That was the last she witnessed. A bite from a spider the average person can think of, the ones about the size of the digit of a finger, can kill a human being within seconds. You make up your own mind what that means about the venom of a spider creature taller than a grown man.

A long period of silence elapsed until a single word was heard. "* Can I talk now?" In the corner of the cave, the one corner devoid of spiders, Jack stood, highly disturbed from everything he had seen, from the constant skittering of regularly-sized and giant spiders, to the interrogation and subsequent murder that took place before his eyes. It was only when Valerie died that he made some dire realizations that kept him quiet, even after the Elf was long dead. She definitely was the muse. She roped herself off the ceiling the same way the muse floated down in his dream. Somehow, she made it into his dorm room unnoticed. The Widow's Kiss was indeed a kiss. It was many things at once, but above all else, it was a threat. A demonstration of power. Whoever she got to with the fangs at her mouth, she could kill easily within an instant. And she got to him in his sleep. She saw, she heard, she commanded everything that any spiders did. If he ever turned on her in any way, she would find out.

Instead of answering though, Mrs.. Tuffet went over to fetch her baby boys, who were strapped to a bag that Jack had been carrying on his back. "* Yes. Now we wait."

"* For what?"

With Curd and Whey as they were called, safely in her arms, three arms dedicated to one of the two each, she went on. "* Until her insides are fluid enough. My little boys can't digest so well yet. I have to help with my own venom." Even her motherly care was terrifying. They waited for quite a while until she thought it to be ready. The baby spider Monsters made disturbing sounds when they slurped out the dissolved innards of that dead Elf and Jack was more than happy when they were finally out of that damn cave. "* I would be very thankful if you tried helping me find that location she described." And once seated in a night bus, he got onto making sense of those directions, so they could be at the place and the time.

Finding the place and the time wasn't difficult. He was so terrified during their extremely long overnight trip, that her words were burned in his mind. "* If you really want to find the lizard so badly, she was ordered by a very particular customer. Not long ago, ten new powerplants were revealed and built. They all connect to one big building. Where the lizard is at any given time, I have no idea. But there is one time in the week when our customer comes to that place. One time in the week when that lizard and her dragon friend are brought there to work on some...machine. She never really told us what it's for. What she said is too ridiculous to be true." As for who 'she' was, it was so obvious in hindsight. All the locations that Jack was looking at, lifted from the police. The police were ordered to stay away from investigating the human disappearance case by their chief of police. "* As for the customer herself..." And who appointed the chief of police? When it really came down to it, who did the chief of police answer to? Who's interests did the chief of police put above any others? "* ...she is the mayor of Enkate City. Jaclyn Wimble. And she only puts this lizard to work on that machine at the same time every week."

With the power to control spiders the way Mrs.. Tuffet did, sneaking your way even into a heavily guarded facility like the Oldenburg facility as easy. And soon enough, they found themselves sneaking onto an unguarded part of the catwalk. With a view down to several security guards keeping an orange dragon strapped onto a very uncomfortable-looking bed in the middle of it. Wires were attached to him all over and he wasn't asleep or sedated. He was scared. Some of the wires led to a glowing crystal, the others to a machine with several displays running. And the mayor herself was there, watching over a yellow lizard making adjustments to the control elements on this confusing metal column and nervously looking back at the mayor and the security personnel that was holding her at gunpoint every few seconds. "* B-b-but please...you c-c-can't..."

The mayor, styled very different from mere months ago, grinned at her. "* There is no use. They can't imagine it. It is beyond the scope of what they can fathom. And it doesn't matter. It will all end. The skeleton is already wandering the plants. I can't afford to delay this any further. I could have gone forward for a few weekends now and delayed it. I am not making that mistake any more than I have to. You are going to start up your soul extractor, otherwise this hall is going to get dust all over it."

She was completely insane. Or so Jack thought. Then again, Jack had seen a lot of insane things in these last few days. To top it off, out of the outside all, a little yellow flower with a face popped up and spoke with a lowered voice. "* A soul extractor! That's what it is, that means...and the crystal...this is bad! Hey you two! You got a phone!" They stared at me. Yes, both of them. For once, even Mrs.. Tuffet was dumbstruck. "* Didn't you hear that woman, there's no time, give me a phone!" Jack had long ceased to care, he didn't know what he was doing, so he just followed suit and gave the flower his. Vines stretched out from within the wall and started dialing a number, and more vines grabbed the phone to bring it to the bud. And someone actually answered it. "* Frisk!", I whispered into the phone. "* Listen! I know where Alphys is! Whatever you do! Don't SAVE! LOAD! You have to LOAD to last week! Now! LOAD or you'll never be able to LOAD again!" I wasn't being in any way devious, it was earnest. Dead honesty was in my voice, strong enough to carry over to him. "* I'll explain later, but do it!"


	54. The stuff of pencils

.

Beyond SAVEing

Chapter 04

The stuff of pencils

* * *

"Ow." With a strength she had never demonstrated him before, and a grip that was actually painful for the first time, Mom dragged Frisk across the snowy streets of Shoneon on a cold but bright Sunday morning.

"I don't want to hear it." She was angry beyond belief. Normally, she would never be so much as disgruntled. Anything remotely negative would always be subtle and give him opportunity to adapt. Not this time. And it wasn't even really his fault. At least he believed not. She wasn't just mad at him. She was shaken up. It had really gotten to her. So much that she was dragging him over to Dad's house herself. He had a bell now, which she ignored and banged on the door. "Open!" It was so early, Dad was rubbing his eyes. He must have just gotten up. "You would not believe what our child has done!" She barely gave him any time to greet her or ask what was going on. "What a sick sense of humour he has!"

Dad raised his open hands. "Now now, calm down. It can not be that bad." As expected, it was Dad who tried to be a voice of reason.

"'Not that bad'..." She sat Frisk down at the kitchen table and it was relieving when her strong hand wasn't pressing and pulling him every inch worth of movement she demanded him to follow at. "I said it before, you would not believe it!" She made sure one more time, that she had Frisk's phone and pulled Dad over to stand next to the couch, far away from Frisk. She really was angry over this. It really must have looked like a very bad prank to her.

Albeit with her usual troubles in operating the interface of a modern cell phone, she eventually managed to browse through his image and video folders to find the video in question. When she opened it, Asgore couldn't trust his eyes. Judging by the starry night sky and how deep below and far away the dark forest was, it was filmed in the night and high up in the air. Sparks of light swirled all around and at it's centre, still dressed in the same shirt they last saw him with his arms stretched out. The person floating in the air on the video, with his eyes trailing an unending stream of tears down his cheeks, was Asriel Dreemurr. The same Asriel - their son - that they had lost almost two decades ago. "Mom. Dad. Howdy, it's me. Yes, it's really me..."

"Wait, wait, wait. What about the machine, Alphys and the crystal?"

"Yes. Jeez. Can't I just once skip ahead a little to give you an idea of where this is going?"

* * *

As if the day wasn't being crazy enough for Sans and Frisk with the trust between them broken and the world ending with none of the two knowing why or how, it got one whole lot more crazy when I called Frisk on the phone. "* Whatever you do! Don't SAVE! LOAD! You have to LOAD to last week! Now! LOAD or you'll never be able to LOAD again!" I wasn't being in any way devious, it was earnest. Dead honesty was in my voice, strong enough to carry over to him. "* I'll explain later, but do it!"

He hung up on me. This was all a bit much for him. For everyone involved. He started standing in place, empty-eyed. Trembling. Close to tears. Sans had long gotten up to come after him to see what this was about. "* Sans..." Sans was smiling, as he always did. Almost every expression on his face was a smile of sorts. This time, it was more of a pokerfaced smile. Sans had ceased to trust Frisk, the moment his old navigation system showed him that history was repeating itself. Or rather that it wasn't. It was coming to an end. After a while of the two staring at each other, he spoke up again, now no longer just close to tears. "* Talk to me!"

Sans' voice was calm. His eyes had long gone dark. "* yeah. yeah it's all comin' down. you wanna tell me something about that?"

Frisk was under more and more pressure. It felt suffocating. At some point, he lost any concern for whether I was telling the truth and simply did it. They found themselves back at the table from one moment to the next. Only that a quick look at their phones revealed that it was indeed a week ago. I was relieved when I ended up back outside in Shoneon Village. It was getting pretty close to 'too late'. Inside, at Undyne's, nobody knew what was coming when it did. But when it did. "* Howdy!" Boy was everyone surprised when I burst out of the middle of the table. Undyne, Toriel, Papyrus, Asgore, the Dreemurrs they all arched away from the table. Most had no idea what was going on or that something was going on at all. Or how to feel about this. Undyne and Papyrus already knew about me, they were just surprised to see me. "* No time to sit around! Get a pot!" For a moment, I turned to the others, who were just sitting there, with the impression that they had time to wonder about this. Out of a growing lack of patience - and a creeping sense or urgency, I began yelling at them. "* Frisk! Pot! Papyrus! You! Car! Now!" If Jaclyn could get going beforehand, we had to move fast. I knew as much.

More or less in panic, the two short ones in the round got up. Within five seconds, Sans was back with an empty pot I could raise and plant my roots in. "* Now get me to the car! Papyrus! Where's the car!" We had to move as fast as we can.

"* you gonna fill us in on what this is about?"

"* End of the world. The world is ending!"

"* yea i got that."

Not completely voluntarily, I took a deep breath to start getting very loud. "* That's what this is about, now shortcut us to the car! I know where Alphys is!" He was annoyed, and he sighed, making the growing tension more noticeable, but I got through to him. Within a few moments' notice, we were all in the car. Well, the Dreemurrs weren't. There was no space for those two. They were left behind. They followed us outside the house, but were left scratching their heads over what was going on. The others, Undyne, Papyrus, Sans, Frisk, they adjusted the car's seats so that there was just enough space for everyone. "* Hit the gas!"

"AYE AYE, CAPTAIN!" With a proficiency I hadn't expected, Papyrus sped his way past any corners in this town without problems.

Undyne was seated in the front, so Sans could sit next to Frisk. And he was as disgruntled as I expected. "* you gonna tell us what's goin' on or what?"

As for me, I didn't even know where to start. "* The plants! The crystal! They - the spiders! Muffet's Mom led me to Alphys! She found her!"

"* Is any of you going to fill me in on what the heck is going on?" Undyne was a lot more agitated, now that Alphys' name had fallen twice. Luckily, Papyrus was focusing on the road.

"* Okay! Okay! But first, Papyrus, take the road towards the city!"

"AYE AYE!"

I had to take a deep breath. If I was incoherently listing down components of the picture, that wouldn't lead us anywhere. "* We don't have time! Sans! Short version!"

"* yeah?"

"* It's Jaclyn Wimble! The mayor! She wants a Monster body! I don't know why but she wants bring an end to the world!"

"* okay."

"* She's forcing Alphys to take Sam's soul without killing his body. She has an arcane crystal hooked up to him! That's how his body will stay intact once his soul is gone."

"* yeah but where are they?"

"* That place you've already been to! The Oldenburg building! Now go!"

I didn't have to tell him twice. He could always go back if he needed to, so the moment he heard that, Sans was up in the air and at the facility immediately. But something stopped him. When he was just outside the complex, he had to stop because something was happening far up in the sky that he couldn't understand. There were explosions. And flying objects. Weird looking spaceships were firing rockets and laser beams at each other. They were way high - so far away, without high-resolution eyes courtesy of the Doc and his newer G-Nerator model, he couldn't have made out any of it, but there were so many of them, they were covering so much area, that you couldn't miss it either way. And it was right over this building. Inside, they indeed were there. He couldn't believe his eyes. He was here so many times and it was basically empty. And now, at the one time during the week when he wasn't free to investigate - a Friday evening - that was when she came out of hiding, with Alphys at that. On the ground floor inside, he could see three security guards were patrolling the hall and two more were pointing guns at Alphys from the catwalk above. Alphys was guiding something from Jaclyn's bleeding corpse onto Sam's lifeless body. Then the entire room was filled with light shining exactly from where it all happened. He could feel currents of pure magic energy fill the room. And then one explosion came from Sam's body that ripped the straps, the machine, everything down on the ground apart.

Even he was launched against the wall from the shockwave it entailed. And when he came to and looked down from the unevenly and barely stable catwalk - no longer held up by some of the now broken and part-melted bars that supported it, he could see that it was too late and zapped himself onto the ground. "* Sans!" The desperate lizard, trembling and covered in dirt and burnt residue from the explosion, was so glad she almost forgot about the guards that were pointing weapons at her. One of them at least, the other one was aiming at Sans now.

But Sans had little attention to spare for that and mostly focused at the slowly dispersing smoke that lay at the centre of that explosion. In the middle of it, waving away the last bits of it, a familiar, very fat dragon stood. Still with his vest. Still with his trilby. But with a very different smile. A terrifying smile. A smile that he recalled, but couldn't really figure where from. "* Hm." He started. Or rather she.

"* It's not Sam!", Alphys shouted. He figured as much. In the time that it took them for me to convince them all to get going and to listen to him, Jaclyn got on with what she had set up here.

Sam held up a hand in front of him and watched it's fingers move as he tried out how flexible his hand movements were. "* A...different sensation." Then again, Sam was long gone. It was his body. But it was now brimming with energy, because it wasn't Sam's soul. Talking to him was talking to Jaclyn. Sans had a deep understanding of how a lot of things worked. He didn't need it explained. The others though, did.

* * *

"* So, Flowey! What's going on?"

All I could do now that Sans had gone ahead, was to hope that he was powerful enough to handle this. "* Papyrus! Take the next one to the right and then follow the roadway. Now. Muffet's Mom led me to Alphys. She was investigating the missing humans, too. What Sans found out about the missing humans being how Alphys disappeared was a real help. But the one that 'bought' Alphys was the mayor! She wants to have a Monster body. Undyne! That machine Sans mentioned, because that Boss Monster in Valerie's mansion mentioned it, right?"

"* Right?"

"* It's a soul extractor! Now what does the name tell you about what it does?"

It was good to notice that Frisk was keeping up. Even in spite of having to hold on during a short episode of Papyrus driving right over one of the many potholes on these roadways. "* But wouldn't that take an incredible power?" He too remembered it. The glyphs on the walls of Waterfall. That was the part of all this that didn't make sense to me. It stood on the glyphs, but Undyne and Alphys had destroyed those. Jaclyn knew it despite that.

"* Yes. She needed incredible power. That's what that big project was about building the powerplants was never for the environment. She just needs them for an 'incredible' power output to get this thing working!"

"* The Green Power Project...", broke out of Undyne.

"* Clean! Clean Power Project! But yes. That's what the plants are for. She hooked Sam onto an arcane crystal so his body doesn't collapse if he loses his soul. And they're removing his soul so they can place hers in it instead!"

Frisk kept going, even though that part didn't seem as important to me. "* But why does she need Alphys, if she uses Sam's body?"

"* You think Sam can build a soul extractor?" He didn't even have an answer. It was just a stupid question. "* So now, Sans is probably faced with a Monster with a human soul. Not just that, but if Jaclyn takes that further, if she gets one more human soul..."

"* I can't LOAD."

"* Yes! Now you get it, you idiot. So a single mistake and our little get-out-of-jail-free card is gone!"

Frisk started breathing at an increasingly nervous rate. He was hyperventilating within a short time. A panic was taking hold of him. "* No! I mean I can't LOAD! I just tried!" So it was already too late! Sans failed!

* * *

It took Sans a few seconds to figure out, but he got there. "* What should we do with this one, Ma'am?", the security guard asked.

Sam waved him 'goodbye'. "* Nothing. You can step back. In fact, I want you to step back. Stay here, but step back. I want to see if I can beat him this time."

"* you avoided me."

For a moment, the smile was gone. "* What?"

"* Friday nights." Sans leaned against the outside machinery that was still intact and nodded for a while. "* pretty specific time, ain't it? every Friday night?"

Soon, Sam caught himself and was grinning again. "* Yes. Every Friday. I was here every Friday. As was she. And you were completely oblivious to it. Predictable time schedules make eluding someone very easy." Sans took a step back, stretched a hand out and summoned swaths of bone attacks that left little to no room to escape them. The fat dragon closed his mouth and ran straight at the one platform that allowed you to dodge all the bones, jumped right onto it with finesse and jumped over the last bit of bones without any problems. A full-fledged bone attack, and he dodged it perfectly. As if he knew it ahead of time. Or as if he simply already knew the attack pattern off by heart. "* As do predictable and re-used bullet patterns by the way." The skeleton wasn't impressed yet. First he tried his next core element. He realigned 'Sam's gravity and had him land on a wall, only to then have bones shoot out of it, but with a perfect routine in his movements, Sam jumped straight off the wall just before the bones shot up and soon fell back on the ground. Sans tried this a few more times in several different directions. But Sam - in spite of being as plump as he was, dodged all his attacks flawlessly.

"* are you psychic or somethin'?"

Sam didn't speak. He just made a broad swiping gesture with his hand. Wherever it passed, pieces of paper appeared in the air at a little less than arm's length and a pencil formed in his hand. He started randomly scribbling circles and spirals onto the papers and doing so at a faster and faster pace, until he did it almost at Sans' full speed. Instead of remaining scribbles on paper though, the random scribbles arose from out of the paper and became three-dimensional objects, that started flying straight Sans' way. Easy to dodge though, they didn't turn around when they passed him. They slammed onto the metal wall behind him. Then his first assessment was proven wrong, as the graphite the moving drawings were made of emerged from the wall again, forced him to dodge them again and then slammed themselves as small scribbles on the dragon's skin. He had to dodge everything again. This was the mayor's soul, she had more LOVE than Frisk ever had. And had a Monster body with a human soul on top of it. Anything so much as brushed off of him and he was dead meat.

On the other hand, Jaclyn had one weakness. A human body was made of mass. This didn't go for Sam. The moment the soul was gone, the body would collapse. Sans left and ran. He ran far away to get a second to prepare to use this weakness. Went through the motions of casting a spell he had long not used. A conscious use of magic, last used when he fought the Centaurs. But then, he used it on himself. Black clouds started swarming his right hand. If he touched Sam with it now, it would force Sam's body to regurgitate Jaclyn's soul and this would all be over. When he returned, Sam stood there and watched him without moving. Apart from his silent smile, it was like there wasn't anyone at home up there. All the better for for the skeleton. If his opponent was going to be mentally absent, maybe Sans could catch an opportunity to get to him. He sped in a spiral along the machinery onto the metal column in the centre to gather momentum and then ran down to the ground to get to the dragon. Sam didn't move. He didn't react to Sans' movements. It was working! He could stop this before it really started. The last bit of stretch, he began grinning, until he felt pressure along his entire front side, an ear-shattering explosion filled his ears and he was launched up into the air. He fell and could only just land unscathed on top of the catwalk, crashing against the bar. It hurt. A lot. What was that?

Slowly, the dragon's head turned upwards and in Sans' direction. He couldn't let that make him hesitate. He had to move faster. He shortcutted to the exact opposite side of the hall, sped right at Sam and was launched back right again. Flinching from the impact of falling on the ground, he got back up to try again. His third attempt, he tried an even more direct approach. Instead of running the last stretch towards the dragon, he zapped himself right behind his back. And was launched away right again. When his back crashed against the machines on the outside, it hurt. But the attacks themselves - assuming these pressure waves were attacks - didn't hurt. He caught his breath and wiped some dust off his skull. "* that's uh, quite the trick ya got there." Alphys was cowering in a corner. Sam didn't seem to pay much attention to her. Sans only needed a second to catch his breath. And when the dragon's head was beginning to turn his way, he stretched out a hand and launched five magic attacks, ranging from barrages of bones over waves of Gaster blaster attacks to swiping Sam's gravity in different directions and following up with bone attacks from there. And again without fail, Sam dodged. Every. Single. Last. Attack. Except for the last one. On the last one, a blaster hit him. It didn't cause any effect, but it did. "* you gonna gimme an idea how you're doin' this?"

And there it was, the acidic purple residue from his karmic retribution. Sam's LOVE would damage him. But it didn't impress the guy at all. He just slowly turned around to Sans and began to walk his way. "* You are faster. And your attacks are probably stronger. But you are not anywhere near a challenge any more. In fact, I have anything at my disposal. I can simply gun you down." He summoned another sheet of paper. In a moments notice, he had sketched an assault rifle, which he pointed at Sans. The moment he did, Sans fired up the G-Nerators in his eyes and outran the bullets that soon followed. He wan from an endless barrage of shots fired from a hand-drawn firearm. He had to really focus for this one. Speed and coordination. Running fast enough not to get hit, but also make sure not to let all the bars and alcoves to jump over make him stumble. To make it worse, it was the same with drawn bullets as with those random scribbles. Them hitting the walls wasn't the end of it, they came all floating back until they stuck themselves on Sam's skin. He fired several drawn magazines' worth of ammunition at Sans until he stopped. Even after he was done, all bullets came floating back to where they came from and added themselves as dark grey spots onto Sam's body. Even though at this point, colours weren't that visible to the regular eye, seeing as the only light came from some half-way-working LED lamps, some of which were only danglin off the cables that powered them.

"* phew, givin' me a real workout. that all you can do with a human soul?" Sam's smile widened to a grin.

"* It is more than that. I feel...stronger than last time." He leaped backwards far enough to stand with his back to a wall, swung his hand around and began running sideways across the hall. And from there, a spiral inwards, until he covered quite a bit of stretch. Along every point he passed, a long line of sheets of paper formed in the air and floated in place. Then, with a pen in each hand, he ran along the entire length of it a second time, drawing something onto the sheets. Onto one last sheet of paper, he drew a whip, which he 'pulled' out of it in much greater length than the way it was first drawn. Then he did the same with a giant grey zipper that seemed to emerge from the joined-together sheets. He stretched his hands upwards and had the zipper unfold itself and drift to the ceiling. Sans tried using this as an opportunity to strike, but every attempt was met with him getting launched away again without Sam moving a muscle. All that the Doc had given him was useless. This guy was out of his league.

Somehow, the zipper stretched itself longer and longer. Extra links added themselves onto it's chain, until it could wrap itself along the entire inner cross-section. The whip stayed in Sam's hand, stretched itself long enough to get into it's destination and grabbed the hook of the zipper. With a single swing, Sam pulled at it and had the whip pull the zipper open, revealing the sky behind it as if the zipper had always been built into the top of the building. The cracking of breaking concrete and the rumbling of bent metals filled the hall. The ground shook. Here and there, metal tubes and blocks came crashing down in-between gusts of sand and gravel falling down. When Sans had long given up rushing the guy, Sam started floating up into the air. Right between the bent corners of the zipper that was already dissolving and moving to cover his skin. Sans could see the reverse motion of Sam charging up a pressure wave similar to the ones he kept repelling Sans with. He tried summoning blaster to fire him, and did. But Sam didn't move an inch. The last few seconds Sans had, he used to grab Alphys and those humans and zap them outside to a safe distance. Once at the top, Sam released a wave that was strong enough to throw them all of balance, even after they were long outside and only on the outer parts of the formerly fenced off area. Formerly, because the same wave they struggled with all of Sans' power to hold onto the ground with, was blowing away most of the fence that surrounded the compound the building was in. To their luck, Most of the force of the attack was caught by the building itself, which slowly but surely, under cracks, tremors and falling equipment, was ripped apart by sheer physical force Sam could apply without even touching them. Within seconds, the entire complex had been turned into the likeness of a junkyard, albeit with more expensive junk. And the sky above was still covered in flying objects and explosions between them.

"* A starry night sky. Much more fitting to the end, than a public building, don't you think?" 'The end'. So Jaclyn was the anomaly that caused this after all. Not Frisk. When Sam came floating back down, Sans noticed his body was significantly changing. The parts that were covered in graphite and coal, were really covered in it. In fact, the graphite was undulating outwards and inwards, and sometimes, it moved further inwards than Sam's body had originally grown. The graphite wasn't just on his skin, Sam's body was blending into it seamlessly. His entire right arm was only made of it, but now that it was it also grew in size and turned more muscular. And out of this brittle, yet more fluidly moving arm, a tendril stretched itself out, supporting itself on the part of his arm that wasn't completely gray. Sam adjusted his balance to accommodate his new, asymmetrical shape and within a moment's notice, first reaching out aimlessly and then pulling itself out of the arm it was coming from, came a roughly humanoid creature, but with neither a nose, nor eyes. From the tremors that went through all parts of it, it looked like it struggled to maintain it's form. One shoulder was significantly higher than the other, and one of it's legs was too short, leaving it limping away as it left it's host. The blind 'thing' screeched with little meaning until it spotted Sans and began to lumber his way.

The skeleton watched that creature find it's way to him for a few moments, before he buried it in bones. But by then, the next one was crawling out of Sam's arm. The grey mass that was left behind when Sans destroyed the first one, 'flooded' back to Sam as a puddle to cover more of him. And the same happened with that of the second one, when that was only shapeless pile of graphite. This happened several more times. Each Graphite creature he destroyed only went back to turn more of Sam's body into more of a 'graphite thing' than what it originally was. They covered the entirety of Sam's legs. And before Sans really knew what was coming, tendrils and likenesses of spider legs burst and supported themselves out of his legs, soon followed by a whole swarm of these things crawling from all the grey surface Sam had to offer. Sans ran back to have some distance and then began covering the entire area in attacks. He left nothing open. These things were crawling everywhere and he had to squash every last one of them. They kept and kept coming and he could already feel himself get exhausted by the time they stopped. But by then, the mass was all gathering at Sam. Where Sam, there was nothing that remotely resembled what he first looked like. It was just one big, blobby, yet dry monstrosity made of graphite. Tendrils sprawled out and placed their fleeting tips on the ground to help it move. Out of the middle, a wider one extended with a flat top, within which a red glowing smileyface was forming.

Alphys pulled out several torches that could impossibly fit into her lab coat. Some of which she just turned on and threw on the ground, two she kept to use herself, and a few of which the guards predictably took for their own use and they all kept their distance from Sans' and Sam's fight. The increasingly unsure guards asked Jaclyn to avoid hitting them with what she was doing, but it didn't appear to anyone like Sam was listening. Sans intensified his attacks more and more, as the bigger the graphite monstrosity was, the more surface it had for more graphite creatures to emerge from it, all of which he had to bury in attacks. But that only ever delayed things. The graphite didn't go away and only went back to it's origin to make 'Sam' bigger. While he did what he could to buy time, the smileyface started opening it's 'mouth'. Out came a deep, torn voice that pressed into the spine of anyone that heard it. "I am the evil they feel. The demon that comes." While more tendrils formed from the new mass that was loading itself onto it, the creature didn't close in on him. "The bell that tolls the end of all things." As time went on, the skeleton began to notice a pattern. The more exhausted he got, the slower his attacks got, the less creatures came out of the monstrosity that Sam had become. He was being played with. He had nothing on this thing, Sam knew it, but was keeping this going anyway. Either he was being played with, or this monstrosity was waiting for something.

"SANS!"

"* Alphys!"

No! No! He had to speed up! He gave it one more burst of it all and contained the dark grey creatures a bit closer together. Papyrus was pulling up with the others just as far as he had to between the towering piles of rubble that littered the area. Undyne jumped right out of the car and rushing straight to Alphys, only to be stopped by the mayor's security personnel pointing their guns at her. Frisk soon got out, too. I was nowhere to be seen. "WHAT IS THAT?" Sans couldn't afford to turn around, but he could guess Papyrus was pointing at the thing that Mrs.. Wimble had turned Sam's body into.

"* gonna need a hand here!" On top of Sans' blasters covering the area in suppressing fire, columns of yard-wide, vertically arranged bones began covering it and smashing onto the ground as well. Papyrus preferred to avoid violence, but he also trusted his brother's judgment.

The threat of gunfire didn't scare off the Captain for long. Within moments, she was trying to wrangle her way past four confused men at arms who weren't sure how to deal with a situation like this. The central tentacle that the monstrosity's 'face' was on, turned around to point at them. "* She is not a threat." When it faced Sans again, it's smile widened a bit more than it already had before.

"* Alphys!" The doctor was a trembling, bibbering mess. "* I'm so happy to see you!" She hugged the relieved lizard. "* What happened? What is all of this."

Alphys sobbed. "* It's my fault. She made me do this! They killed Sam! He's gone. He's - this!" One pointer towards the dark grey monstrosity was all it needed for them to understand. Sam was long gone. Dead. 'He' was now Jaclyn.

Once again, the disturbing voice echoed across the surrounding area. "* Not long now. Ah, they have arrived." The creatures stopped coming. In the brief moment Sans believed he had, he turned around to see a large black van pull up at another open area just outside the rubble. Two more security guards exited it at the front, opened the back and brought someone along. Six people, all humans, all kept at gunpoint, all chained together at their necks, their wrists and their feet. Sans thought about simply attacking them, but this big thing they were fighting that had stopped, if it wanted to, it could crush them completely. He wasn't sure what to do. He wasn't sure there was anything he could do. Just evacuating everyone wasn't gonna do much. If that thing was left alone getting more human souls, it was only a question of time before it would catch up and get them all. Grabbing the prisoners and taking them far away wouldn't solve it either. Before he had much of an idea what to do, the guards and the human prisoners were already coming closer. In the end, he had to take one of the suboptimal solutions. He didn't have anything better.

"* pap! hold this thing down! i'm gonna..." it was too late. The graphite monstrosity laughed, tendrils buried themselves into the ground and shot out where every human stood and burst through their chests. Every human except Frisk. Even the guards. It happened so fast, it was hard to keep up, and from a growing surge of pure, magic energy, all senses were drowned out and white light was filling out the entire area to the point where nobody could see anything else. The only thing, upon speeding himself up, that Sans noticed that seemed a bit out of place, were green thorned vines shooting out of the ground in several places near where the graphite tendrils did.

For several seconds, it was silent. Nobody knew what would happen next. Jaclyn had won, right? Jaclyn won, she got seven souls - thirteen actually -and thus was as far as any Monster believed, omnipotent and if her talk of an 'end of all things' was any indication, she was the one behind the universe ending. The skeleton was confused. He was speeding himself up in part out of some remainder of a survival instinct. If all had ended though, why was he seeing the white that covered his entire sight. If all had ended, why was he thinking? He shouldn't have existed. Yet he thought and thus he was.

* * *

I had done it! He had done it! He could feel the power of seven souls course through his body once again, which he gave his old self's shape. While no-one's sight was any clearer, he jumped around in place. "* Yes! I did it!" As the light slowly began to fade, he continued to make a victory dance, even though no-one could see him do so. "* Beat you! Seven out of twelve, I win, you lose!" What happened was too fast for most to keep up with. Since the mayor had something similar to vines, I had had a good idea of what was happening next and while still unseen to anyone, stretched out my vines to be ready when it happened. And what I predicted, did happen. Sam's tentacles shot out of the ground to kill the humans round. Not just the prisoners, Jaclyn's lackeys, too. And just when she was certain she had them all, I stretched out my vines and snatched as many of the souls as I could, and took them for myself, right from under her grasp. As the light faded, the little shape of Asriel Dreemurr was continuing to dance in place and repeat it in a mocking fashion. Jaclyn had six human prisoners brought to her. And a total of six more security guards. So barring Frisk, who she wasn't targeting, there were twelve souls to take. The mayor had one soul already. And before it was too late, I had taken seven of the twelve souls that there were. Meaning Asriel - back in his cervine form, had seven, Jaclyn though, had only six. Frisk's inability to SAVE was just some kind of hiccup. None of the guards were dead until this happened after all. "* Seven out of twelve! I win, you lose!" He continued when it was clear, but slowly turned around to where this big, grey abomination had been shambling about before. "* I win you lose I win you lo - wait..."

"* Asriel?", burst out of Undyne, and Papyrus was about to say something, too. But Alphys, almost but not quite as surprised as them, pulled them aside to whisper something in her ears. Frisk could figure roughly what.

Asriel instantaneously stopped from sheer shock when he saw what was standing there. Who was standing there. This silhouette. The way her hair was styled, her hair colour, her green striped sweater, still the way he remembered her. "Hm..." She said. Standing there with her arms hanging down. "Surprising. I paid so much attention to monitoring the skeleton, I honestly thought you were still in the Underground, wasting away in your self-made solitude." He was supposed to be relieved, right? Anyone who had an idea who that was was supposed to be overjoyed. Then why was he feeling so uneasy? His back tensed up, Asriel lost his stance and almost fell over for a second. He was supposed to feel joy. But what he felt, he could only describe as dread. Slowly, but surely, she turned around. The more of her face and her front she could see, the more certain Asriel was that it was her. "Howdy, Partner. We haven't seen each other in a while. It is me. Your long lost friend. Your best friend." And that smile! Her creepy face! She was doing it and she was doing it in a way he hadn't seen before. It wasn't stopping. She wasn't putting on a show. This was a smile appropriate to what she was thinking. She didn't spell out her name though.

Everyone twitched when they heard a shrill scream. A hand shot out of the earth and the rubble below, almost every bit of it was covered in red blood. It grabbed hold of the floor and pulled up the rest of a mutilated, starved human - or a corpse thereof that was still moving. And screaming. Four more blood-soaked corpses burst and crawled out of the ground and as if by no means of their own, floated up into the air. Under disturbing cracks and creaks, each sent tremors into everyone's spines, their bones broke, and their bodies twisted. By invisible hands, their bodies were being forced into shapes until they all came to a halt, just high enough to float above the human girl like a title in a game. Each of the half-dead creatures sighed and struggled for air, even after long every bone was broken. Each one had taken up the shape of one letter of her name. Chara. As soon as everyone had read it, they exploded. Each burst apart completely until the closest thing to any indication that they had ever been there were dark droplets of blood spread across the ground.

It took Asriel a while to catch himself. He expected a lot. He didn't expect Chara. "* What? How? Why?"

Chara's smile faded. "Why are you so surprised? If there is no conceivable way for me to be here right now, how come you are?" That shot down Asriel's shock quite a bit. "But if you must insist, I will provide an explanation. Most of the time, I had no idea how it happened, or even what was happening for that matter. In the very beginning, I was absolutely confused. I saw myself walking around, talking to familiar faces, to new faces, and kept wondering: Why was I back from the dead? Of course I wasn't. My body, my human soul, my determination, it wasn't mine." Her smile came back and she flashed a glance at Frisk. "But his. I needed a vessel, like you. You had a flower. I had him. You were not that far off when you kept calling him by my name. I was there. With him. With you. All this time. And when they reached the surface, he shook hands with a human politician, one of the first humans to come in physical contact with ever since, I found myself seeing the world through a different set of eyes. I found myself recalling a new set of memories. And this happened again and again and again. I wandered from human to human. I collected their memories, their thoughts, their feelings." She paused. "Their LOVE."

Sans had calmed down quite a bit. Maybe the situation wasn't as hopeless. He had his hands back in his pockets and hooked in. "* so there's why the mayor had a high LOVE, right?"

Chara's smile faded. "No. If Jaclyn's LOVE hadn't been high to begin with, this conversation wouldn't be happening. Her LOVE is high, because her personal life consisted of killing a random person at least once a week. And that would be that. I came upon her, I took her soul, and now I stand before you. What bothered me more, SHE could help with." Suddenly, the air around them flickered, as if a screen or a television was glitching and when it was over, Alphys was being pressed onto the ground. By Chara's. Undyne tried to wrestle the little girl off of her, but was launched away by a pressure wave similar to the ones she used as 'Sam' to keep Sans away. Chara made sure everyone could see her, when with disturbing smacking and pressing sounds, her eyes and mouth forced their way further inward, leaving only hollow openings behind and her face began to melt ever so slightly. When she spoke, she spoke with a deep voice that sounded as if not only she was talking, but a large choir of different voices. _**"Tell them, Alphys. What is the colour of determination?"**_

The lizard was now screaming in fear, and took Chara's foot burying itself deeper into her back until she started talking. "* There is no colour! There is no colour! There is no colour!"

 ** _"Almost. The determination you harvested from the souls Asgore gave you, what colour did it come in."_**

"* Red?"

 _ **"FALSE!"**_ Every time Chara didn't like what she heard, she dug her foot deeper into the pinned lizard's back.

Alphys needed a few attempts before she could answer coherently. "* Blue? Purple? Orange? I don't know! It was never the same!"

 _ **"What happened soon after extracting it. Tell them what you told me! What happened every time?"**_

"* It turned red! It turned red!"

For a brief moment, Chara's face turned back to normal. "Good. Now why would that be? Was there perhaps something red before? Where did the red come from? What could possibly have landed in that vat that was red? You didn't always know that there ever would be a single human to come to the Underground, did you? That is to say: after me. For all you knew, there would never be one." Alphys flinched when Chara increased the pressure just a bit. If she wanted her to die, she would have. Everyone around knew that. "Tell them. Where did you get red determination from? Tell them!"

Alphys was crying loudly while she answered. She was beyond broken by that point. "* The prince! I waited until Asgore wasn't looking and then dug out some of Asriel's dust to try with that! But it didn't work, it was nothing!"

"Correct. But not absolutely nothing. That determination was mine. My determination corrupted theirs. My determination turned theirs into mine. It was my determination. All of it was. Do you understand now, Asriel?" She faced the perplexed Boss Monster. "Do you understand why no matter how hard you tried, you wouldn't die? You didn't die, because I didn't want you to." Finally, her face became that of a normal human being again. "I would never want you to die." Her expression changed. It seemed almost as if she was close to tears. "You mean so much to me."

He didn't know what to say. Did that mean the entire time, she was keeping him alive? Then..."* Why are you doing all this? What's all this with ending the world?"

Their surroundings flickered again, with Chara ending up right in front of him. She slightly raised an eyebrow, but got control of it and returned to as neutral an expression as she could. "Why? What do you mean, why? Can't you figure it out? After half a year, and you can't think of a reason why someone might want to end themselves. Preferably end everything? Absolutely none?" Everyone was silent for quite a while. "I see. You were always like this. I liked this about you. I never wanted to change that. You know so little about the surface. Who would want to take away that innocence? So filled with hope." Again, her face twisted for a brief moment. _**"So sheltered from the atrocities and the futility that defines this world."**_ And right again, went back to normal. "I don't want to see you suffer through where things are going. Nobody would want to. I also don't want to. But I have to. The last opportunity I had to do this, was when the two of us shared one body and one mind."

"* You tried to kill them all."

"But only to protect you. If I had let them, you would have died. We let them and die you did. Killing them was a means to saving your life. That was why. At least, that was what I believed why I tried. That was what I told myself. That was the excuse. That was just a lie."

"* Then what? What is it I can't know? Would you really rather end it?"

"Yes."

"* Does this have anything to do with why you hate humanity?"

"...Yes..." Chara's eyes grew heavy, when she stared at him. "Humanity failed me. You, Mother, Father, you three were strangers, but you took me in anyway. You gave me a family, where humanity forsook me, they took a blooming field and left behind a wilting acre. They left behind millions of wilting acres like myself! Maybe billions!" Asriel's head dropped. What was she doing? Why was she doing this? "Monsters are so nice. So untouched by the grim realities of the surface. No-one is safe up here. You will be taken advantage of, you will be divided, of all of you. Sooner or later, you are going to depend on humanity's help as well, and they will watch as you are slaughtered out of nothing but sheer complacency. Out of fear of being called names they will know that they shouldn't, but they will let it happen anyway." She couldn't be telling the truth. _**"This world is stuck! Humans and Monsters do not have the mettle that it takes to say no and dig their heel in even for once! This world will become a dark-skinned idiocracy, a barren planet with nothing worth living for, inhabited only by cruel, mindless savages."**_

It wasn't that he had no idea. In my time up here, I caught a glimpse of what Chara was talking about. But was it this bad? Why would she rather destroy everything and kill everyone, than to let them live? Live with what little time and what little hope there was? Quite a while passed, just with Asriel staring at Chara with little of an idea what to say. He could see the world, the same way she could now. He could feel it. But deep down, he felt that she was wrong. "* No." He bolded his fists and tried to take a confident stance in front of her. Something he had never done in his lifetime. "* No. I don't accept that. I'm sorry Chara, but I'm going to stop you. I still have seven souls, I'm going to stop you and we'll find a way out of this."

She didn't even twitch. Chara was completely relaxed. "Count the souls."

"* What?" As he could expect, she always knew how to unsettle him. "* What do you..."

Slowly, Chara moved one hand down the length of her front side, and her chest opened. Inside, he could see them float in a circle. She walked closer and closer, showing him the souls she had absorbed. "Look closely. And count the souls."

"* No."

"Yes." The closer she came, the easier it got to make them all out and count them. He had trouble at first, because he didn't believe it. There were seven. Where did she get a seventh soul? As soon as Asriel's expression told her that he understood, she closed herself again. "I didn't expect it either. I first had an inkling of it when I acquired this body. I felt more powerful than when we shared one. More powerful within a weaker body. But now I understand why. I travelled from human to human. And sharing one body - in the company of other human souls, little by little, my own soul regrew. A few months with a single one at a time and a few moments with six others. That is all that it took. Now, I am on par with you. And sooner or later, the feelings of those souls you took will overwhelm you. _**I will overpower you, and then I will gather more souls. And erase. And erase. And erase until nothing is left."**_

She always knew how to dishearten him. He was trembling and struggling to find the right word. "* N-no! You're wrong! I can't let you do this!" With another flash of light, he took on the adult form he had showed Frisk before. Grown up, complete with it's black robe, decorative shoulder pieces and unusual eyes. And when he did, there was her creepy face again. Still completely relaxed, Chara took a few steps back, so she could see him in his full glory.

"Ah, Swordsman Asriel. And I see you kept your changes!" She pointed at his cheeks. "What are the black eyes supposed to mean anyway?" She pulled together in a display of faux-surprise. "Oh wait, let me guess. It is supposed to signify your lack of an own soul. Oh how dark. How edgy." Once she had enough distance from everyone, her face turned back into it's decayed, hollow state, and the sound of her voice followed suit. _**"I will show you dark and edgy."**_


	55. Death and Spite

.

Beyond Saving

Chapter 05

Hopes and Dreams

* * *

They all stood there, dumbstruck. Without much of an idea what to do, surrounded by clusters of bits and pieces of a broken and torn-apart building and layers of steel and broken concrete, dead human bodies and facing a little girl, they watched. A little girl that - to as much of a surprise to some as Asriel Dreemurr himself, was somehow back from the dead after a grey creature made from the soul of the mayor, took the souls of seven humans. They watched as only Asriel stood up with any chance against her. With a little more resolve, his adult form summoned his swords. _**"I assume those are meant to scare me?"**_ , she immediately asked. _**"All right. I suppose it was bound to come down to something like this. We are going to play. One last game of cowboys and swordsmen."**_ She burst out in demonic laughter as she disappeared in a similar flash of light. What stood there in her stead after that, none of them had seen before. The whole of her body had the rough shape of a grown woman. Her face now remained in it's rotten, part-molten state. She retained her neck-long hair, but it was covered by a Stetson with yellow strings woven at it's outside. With her feet clad in flashy brown leather boots with golden spurs, she wore a tight pair of black leather trousers. A corset stretched across the length of her chest and was wrapped in a brown leather jacket. In a demonstrative fashion, she swung out her left hand. Once stretched out, a revolver manifested itself in it's already ready grip. She did the same with her right hand, and an abnormally long kitchen knife appeared in it. _**"Frisk was a little human with nothing. What do you want to call this form you have now? Swordsman Asriel? The absolute god of hyperdeath? He didn't even fight back and you lost anyway. As for me? Try Desperada Chara. The Doomsday Gunslinger."**_

Before Asriel really knew what was coming, she sped straight towards him. He only switched just in time for blades to cross and him using both his sabers to parry her knife. When she raised her pistol at him though he had to jump away. He didn't land back on the ground when he did. Instead, he remained floating in the air, as did she once she jumped right his way. Within those first moments, the blasts and explosions, far in the distance up above became impossible to make out, as the black of the sky was filled with visible torrents of pure magical energy, shining in all colours of the rainbow. She repeated the same routine. Charged at him with her knife and when he thought he blocked the attack, used her free hand to aim the gun at him. He had to back off again. She came at him a third time with her knife raised. When he raised his sabers though, she pulled it back, spun around and kicked him straight in the stomach. Far outside of the ruins, he was launched onto the ground. In spite of seven full souls, the impact actually hurt him. When she lowered herself to stand on the ground though, a bone attack almost hit her, before it bounced off another of her pressure waves. Her hollow eye-sockets met those of Sans. Before he knew what was coming, Chara sped straight to him in a burst so fast, the force from it caused a wind that blew a whole wave of dust and rubble Asriel's way. Sans tried to raise a hand, but something was constricting him. He couldn't even see anything doing that, she was just keeping him wrapped in pure exerted power. The earth next to them rumbled and cracked open, and something rose out of the ground. A sculpture rose out of the ground. Made of bleeding, wounded, dead pale body parts, but the shape of a towering basketball basket. **_"Get..."_** With one jump, she forced him into a net made of sinew and human hair, which wrapped itself around him and kept him trapped. **_"...dunked on."_**

Asriel flinched, but got up quick enough to charge right at her when she was done. This time though, she simply dodged it. Easily at that. He crashed into a metal container. Calmly, his old friend came closer. **_"It would appear I can't rely on your friends standing by and watching watching."_** She opened one hand, and a black-and-red pulsating orb formed in it. It's intensity grew more and more. **_"All right. So be it. You think there is any hope? So many thought that, but they never had the heart to take a stand in front of the true culprits whenever the time was right. So many humans that wouldn't have needed to, spent their lifetimes trying to find out what was right in front of their noses, fought hoping that all that was holding them back were errors and misunderstanding. They ended up spending lifetimes suffering this pointless struggle. You really believe yourself when you say there is hope? Go ahead. Say it to their faces!"_** She tossed away the orb, which upon hitting the ground, passed through and sank into it. When Papyrus and the others followed, they were only in time to find themselves stumbling in place. The ground beneath their feet shook. Much like when Chara introduced herself, a scream could be heard from quite a bit off towards where the now torn-down fences were. A hand grabbed the ground from beneath and with it, a human crawled out of it. He was visibly starved, covered in wounds, and his face was eviscerated beyond recognition. In fact his cheeks were blown off and his upper head was only loosely hanging onto the rest of the body. The shrieking was joined by more and more shrieking. All over the compound and even the fields of grass around it, even from the forest the open area had been cut into, more walking corpses came crawling out of the ground and stumbling in their direction.

"* it's just a magic attack!", Sans tried to call out to them. Chara just laughed, jumped into the air and started floating in circles above Asriel. The Boss Monster readied his blades again, sped towards the first one of those bodies and sliced it apart. As soon as his blade was deep enough, the body collapsed and transformed back into the earth it was created from. By the time the distance to Chara was long enough, Undyne readied a spear and cut open Sans' prison. These things kept crawling out of the ground. Not remotely as frequent as the graphite creatures before, but Chara didn't seem to have to stand in place and continue to make new ones. They were swarming the place all on their own. Asriel tried his best to speed from corner to corner to slice through any of them he could on his way, but they kept coming everywhere at once.

"* What are you waiting for?" Undyne switched into a mindset fit for a captain and started commanding. "* Ready any magic attacks you got, we need to defend this place until we find a way to solve this!" Soon enough, the laughing woman in the sky aimed her firearm at Asriel and pulled the trigger. More brightly than the colours and rays that filled the sky, shun a light from her pistol and a projectile that shun in the same colours shot straight at the prince. He was only just able to turn around and deflect it with one of his blades, but the force of it was enough to push his hand so much to the ground, he nearly fell over. He wasn't going to be able to to deal with all of this at once. He had to trust them to defend themselves. These things weren't moving so fast after all. The skeletons got in position back to back. Alphys enchanted Frisk's hand to make it fire little lightning projectiles, as well as Undyne's spears with any that she threw with her own hands. They stood together and began fending off the bodies that headed their way. "* Remember that they're just attacks!"

In the sky above them, Asriel tried charging after Chara again, but she could move around just as quickly and kept a distance from him, keeping the two of them moving in a circle above the destroyed building. In fact she slowed him down, firing round over round of her shining projectiles. Deflecting and parrying them with his chaos sabers was so difficult, he was considering going for a spontaneous shield instead of his usual choice of weaponry. After a while, he grew tired of this. She wouldn't let him get close unless she wanted to. So he remained at a distance, dispelled his blades and instead, readied the enormous blaster he had made up over a decade ago. The chaos buster. Armed with this weapon, much bigger than her pistol, he sped after her and covered her surroundings in salves of shining gunfire. But there was no use to that. He believed her saying she had used Frisk as a vessel and witnessed everything he had been through, since she dodged every salve, every projectile, no matter how much he tried to aim in different angles towards her, she could read his movements like a book.

Attacking with lightning that struck the ground was out of the question, what if it hit the others? But there was something he could do. He stopped. As expected, so did she. He raised one hand into the air, and above it, three gigantic stars manifested, which he then directed straight her way. Instead of leaving it at that though, he readied his buster the moment the stars were moving to make dodging harder. Chara aimed at the stars with her pistol. Instead of herself firing though, three giant silhouettes of cowboys appeared above her, each with a giant revolver of their own, each shot down one of the stars long before it was anywhere near Chara, and after that, dodging Asriel's other ranged attacks was easy as well. Nothing worked on her. Maybe cheating would help. He teleported right next to her, but much like how he could do that, Chara's surroundings simply flickered for a moment and in the next, she was far away again. He tried again, she flickered away again. Warping and flickering soon became the usual means of moving about between the two of them, since they could both move so much faster that way. At some point, he got out his chaos buster and charged it. Just before the moment came to fire, he warped right in front of her. This time, she dodged normally, but did so with ease. She floated higher up, pushed the firing weapon down with one hand, brought her knife to his neck with the other, but stopped at the last moment, before she raised her feet to try and push down his weapon, or kick him in the stomach. This time, he anticipated something like this, dispelled his buster and went straight to her throat the same way she pretended to before. He was so glad he finally got the upper hand on her, only for the hand that was no longer occupied with getting rid of a non-existent weapon, to press down his sword-arm. In the brief moment that he was distracted by that, she swung around the other arm and landed a painful strike on Asriel's face.

He was startled enough that Chara got an opportunity to spin around and kick him again, the way she had in the beginning. This time, he had gotten a bit more used to that. When he had just caught himself, looking up only left him staring into three hollow gaps, laughing as Chara readied two pistols and fired an unending rain of shining light projectiles onto him. They struck him. Each one impacted with a force he couldn't ignore. The whole of them hurt all over any area she could cover. He had his eyes closed for too long to notice that Chara summoned another giant silhouette of a western character, which fired a suitingly large bullet at Asriel. And the disfigured woman rode it right to it's destination. Just before it arrived, she leapt off for it to crash onto Asriel, dragging him down onto the ground where it vanished. At that point he had long kept his eyes closed and everything was hurting.

Chara landed right at his side and loomed over him for as long as it took for him to squint and shake off the dust enough. In the light of their power surging through the air, the ground looked as if it was a very strange, always shifting dawn. _ **"Get up. Fight."**_ He was being too slow with getting up, so she placed one boot on his chest and pushed him back on the ground. _**"Why do you think miracles can happen, if you can't even take on someone that is barely stronger than you?"**_

He had one more attack before he had to start rotating. Within one swipe, he summoned a chaos saber into one hand, charged a small wave of shocker breakers and channeled them into the blade while swinging at her leg. Suitingly, she dodged it and got off of him, so he could get back up on his feet. "* Why?" Still breathing heavily, he asked her: "* Why are you stronger?"

She smiled at him with those hollow eyes. _ **"Humanity has long descended into a dark place. I have the combined LOVE of rapists, serial killers, and war veterans. You may no longer be a Monster, but you are still largely magic."**_ Asriel rubbed his head, discovered one corner from which a whole swarm of walking bodies was heading for the others and summoned one star to crash into all of them. Chara didn't make any attempts to stop him. Until he was done. _ **"I have seen what I needed to see."**_

"* Wait, what..." The prince stretched out a hand to beckon her to stay, but behind the veil of her emptied -out face, he could already tell her mind was set. Chara began floating higher and higher up into the air and stretched out her arms. From all over, the moaning and screeching bodies began losing their balance, as some invisible force was pulling them into the sky. New ones kept appearing, but they were all soon pulled upwards. From the looks of it, not by their own will. He tried to shout as long as she was in hearing range, as Chara's ascent didn't seem to have a conceivable end. "* What are you doing?"

"* Asriel!" A slightly out of breath Frisk ran over to him, and the skeletons, Undyne and Alphys followed them. They could move around to a degree, now that all the creatures that came out of the ground were being dragged upwards. "* What's happening?"

The bodies that were dragged upwards, converged into one big mass that was just below Chara at all times. Limbs shifted, heads disappeared, they all merged into one unholy-looking abomination, a growing planetoid of disfigured human flesh. In a show of desperation and confusion, arms and legs flailed about, all heads that remained visible but hadn't been screeching, were doing so now like a tireless choir. Surrounded by a lulling storm of figures spiraling upwards all around them, some of them soon grasped what was happening. She was readying a huge attack. "* guys! serious for a sec! grab holda me!" Sans stood in the middle of them and stretched out his hands. Papyrus and Undyne were long past the point of questioning things and just obliged when they saw Asriel do it. Once everyone was together, Sans teleported them away. Onto the green field nearby, not right below the nightmarish planetoid Chara was creating. "* welp. shoulda seen that one coming." Upon looking upwards, they quickly realized that Chara had teleported as well, so as to be right above them right again. "* hold on tight, this one's gonna be rocky!" When wrapped in his friends, Sans sped himself up and tried zapping them a longer stretch away, including leaving them in the air and upside-down for a moment to gain opposite momentum, before landing on a square in a nearby town. But the moment he did, the ground shook again, new bodies sprang out of it, and drifted right up to Chara, who had followed them. They tried it a few more times at an increasing speed, but regardless of how many times they tried escaping, she only ever needed a second to follow them and have them trapped this way right again. Back at the ruins of the Oldenburg building, the little moon of corpses had a diameter larger than the entire compound. She really was going to crush them completely and utterly.

Up above, Asriel appeared right next to Chara to shout at her. "* Stop this!" She ignored him. "* Stop!" He readied a blade and struck at her. She moved aside to dodge it, but the cluster of bodies kept growing. Desperate to get her to stop, he used both sabers and struck at her aimlessly. It was hopeless though, somehow, she could read all his movements, even better than Frisk ever could. At some point, she grabbed one swinging arm, pushed it up, struck his chest with the grip of her pistol, used the momentary distraction to kick him in the solar plexus, and when he was pulling together from pain and lack of breath, spun around and combined a kick with her leg with a wave of pressure to launch him back towards the ground. Speeding through the air, he found himself knocked into the target area of her 'human moon' by the endless spiral-shaped stream of corpses adding to it from below. When he caught himself and stopped falling down, the growth of the sphere was still going. No, worse than that. Chara stretched her hands out and pointed their palms towards that thing she created. Within them, a blood-red orb formed and shot out a ray towards the giant abomination, pushing it down. Asriel was out of time. Back below it, within the storm, he took a look at the sphere. It hadn't changed. Screaming faces, grabbing hands, struggling legs, and it didn't even all make sense. Here and there, singular jaws moved about, hands looking out of them and trying to grab hold and failing from being just hands, on other places, feet were moving about, eyes grown out of them in inconsistent sizes trying to make out the surroundings. And it was all moving down, straight towards them.

You couldn't dodge this attack, because if one of the others was out of it's range, she simply flickered back into position for it to be. You couldn't stop it by attacking her, because she would dodge any attacks and out-maneuver Asriel. The prince figured one thing while he knocked any current dirt off of his robe. He had to attack the attack itself. He tried all his usual, made-up attacks. Shocker breakers, Star Blazings, he even created the mass-attracting goat skull that was a Hyper Goner and launched it onto the giant blob, but it simply disappeared inside it and caused the bodies that were still swarming and adding to it, to swarm it faster. The regular magic attacks he was using couldn't get through this. He needed to cut through it himself, and regular cuts with his sabers wouldn't cut it. He needed to make up something bigger. He created a two-handed broadsword. Not the realistic kind, the gigantic kind Asriel had seen in a role playing game from the nineties. Engraved with white glowing runes across the inner part of the blade, while the edges were brimming in the rainbow colours of the power Asriel was infusing them with. A sword that channeled his power directly and in a very concentrated way. This was his best shot.

And only just in time, this small moon was getting bigger and bigger and closer and closer. He was almost worried he could feel it's gravity pulling at him, but it wasn't that big yet. He had to get this right in one attempt. Any mistake, and they were goners. All of them. He took a deep breath, made sure he was holding the sword in a solid grip, kept his eyes wide open and swung back his weapon. When ready, he struck out as hard as he could, made the blade cut right through the cluster's bulbous surface, torrents of blood splashed past and around him, showing to him that it worked. He at least got through it's surface. With another breath, he channeled all the power he could muster into the blade's edge and slowly but surely, forced his way right through this orb of human bodies. Hands and feet were trying to grab hold of him from all over. He had to just blend it out. And he was met with a lot of resistance. It was so solid it felt like Chara was consciously solidifying it to try to stop what Asriel was doing, and that was probably actually the case. From the hands and feet vanishing towards his legs and feet through, he could tell it was working. It was solid, but also loose enough to break up if he cut through it. But it had a core all the harder to get through. He hoped. He tried and he hoped. His had to succeed. He cut and swung and sliced and struck. He put all he had into that edge for it to destroy anything it touched, and eventually, he felt the cracks and subsequent break that allowed him to pull through. Past that point though, he could gather the momentum he needed to get through the other side of the core and back outside.

Out of the hole he had cut, swaths of these things were falling out, and on their way back to the ground, collapsing and reverting into the dirt and rock they were made from. From here, it was easy. He fired up his buster, charged it, and burned everything left of the giant orb from the inside, angle by angle, bit by bit, until it was so loose and disconnected that it fell apart completely. He sighed with relief at what he had done, only to feel himself be grabbed by the neck and dragged away. He was flickered away by his old friend, who pinned him onto the ground. She let him go, but she also flashed her knife. She laid her other hand on it's grip and slid along it's length to the end of it's blade. Every bit of the blade that her hand traced, started glowing with a menacing deep red light. _**"I was hoping I wouldn't have to do this from up close."**_

She was going to kill him! That must have been what the red shining blade was. Seven souls and all her LOVE's worth of intent to kill. For a moment, he caught a glance of the others running his way, Sans trying to zap behind Chara's back and getting knocked back each time and his life, all of his memory from his actual life, to all the timelines he lived through as a flower, to the brief time he had become Asriel again, flashed before his eyes. The lives of all the humans who shared his body flashed before his eyes. And just in time, he caught himself. He vanished and appeared a few steps away, far enough for her to not just stab when he was on the ground. She smirked. Even through the scary face she had warped her own into, Asriel could tell this surprised her. He tried confronting her again. She didn't say a word. Once in range, he swung one of his sabers, only to feel his arm be swiped aside. Before he even had time to look and see, he immediately sped away. He tried again, this time by holding one blade in position in case she did the same again, and struck forward with the other. She pushed his weapon arm down with one hand and raised the knife in her other hand to stab him from above. Again he sped away. "* How are you doing this?"

While moving as if a marionette steered by foreign hand - an act to scare him, that he remembered her doing when they were both living children - she answered. _**"Do you think I could collect the life experience of anyone I pass, and not pick up some martial arts classes here and there? Or the memories thereof? Frisk taught me to dodge. And several others taught me everything else from proper stances to deflecting and overpowering."**_ She spun around her knife to ready it for an attack of her own. _**"Come now, Partner. Give up. Let it happen. The pain will not last for long, I can promise you that."**_ These words got under his skin more than anything else this choir of voices was saying through her.

While disheartened for a moment, he pulled himself together and braced himself for her next assault. When it came, he pretended to try to parry her attack, but then instead, warped to a safe distance. "* Chara, stop! Talk to me!"

 ** _"There is nothing to be talked about. I can not risk you stopping me..."_** She charged at him again, and he warped away again. They repeated this in regular intervals, in a rough circle around the little crowd that rooted for the prince with little to do to interfere. If Sans couldn't, none of them could. _ **"...by any means you could come up with!"**_

"* No! Why are you doing this? What did you mean by 'futility'?"

She was barely slowed down by him asking. She took a shot at him again. _ **"There is no room for change."**_ And again. _**"No reason for ambition."**_ And again. **_"Our existence is meaningless."_** She never stopped. Over and over, Asriel found himself struggling for his dear life. **_"Every allocation of a job is preordained, guided by ethnic policies. Anti-human policies. Anti-Monster policies soon. Every seat in office is granted only where the pre-established, partisan peers approve them. Starting new businesses is impossible, regulations and taxes that malicious players are exempt from, kill every newcomer. Building new homes - or anything for that matter - suffers the same hopelessness."_**

"* Wait - stop! The village!" Finally, she gave him a break. Chara stopped her repetitious pursuit of him to listen to him. "* The village we all live in! Shoneon village! Those are new homes, right? They got it done!"

Chara's hideous head raised up and she burst out in uncontrollable laughter. _**"A lucky strike in the dark. A miracle of a businessman, outperforming all and yet struggling to maintain himself so much, he went bankrupt multiple times - bullied his way into forcing the old players to let him be an insider like them. You had help! Just like how you got the money necessary to build it all. Before you try to argue that way ask the others. Who is the miracle that helped them overcome the regulations? Who does he make money off of? Who gave Father the money he needed to make it all possible? Monsters are nothing without the powers that be. And you are only tolerated so long as you are useful! You are completely and utterly at their mercy and there is nothing you can do. You think if they just try and work hard enough, they can make it well enough to make a difference? Every organization of any kind that exists, belongs and serves the same people. Every business is a shell company, every humanitarian organization a front for drugs and human trafficking, every civil rights fund is a partisan or even racial attack group, all aimed at anyone who is too inconvenient. As of yet, that is humanity. Before long, it will be Monsters, too."**_ He found himself pushed more and more into a corner, closer and closer to standing with his back to a large chunk of broken wall. _**"Should Father step out of line a single time - should the powers that be once not get their way - and sooner or later, they will - if they don't, they will ensure that they will, you will be surprised how quickly you will see Monsters pass around deceptive literature and call for revolution and democracy. Happy families will be torn apart with a promise of status and equality. Children stripped of their fathers. Ambitious young Monsters conditioned to be bitter and resentful enemies of their own kind, like so many humans already are. You will be trapped. Your situation will be hopeless. Your life will be pointless."**_ He was terrified at how sincere she looked when the next sentence passed those non-existent lips. _**"But there is a way out. We don't have to live to witness any of this. We can end it now!"**_

And this was the point, where she stopped smiling. ** _"I am sorry, Asriel. This is goodbye."_** Too fast for his eyes to follow, she flickered over to stand right at his side and strike for him. This time, he didn't find time to escape. A tearing sensation went through his right shoulder, where her kitchen knife had struck him. A searing pain he had never felt, and for a moment, all of his almost lost it's integrity.

"* No! Wait! Chara, please!" Frisk couldn't help come closer and call out to her.

And to everyone's surprise, she listened. She stayed in Asriel's proximity, but she answered anyway. _**"You are delusional. I was only ever stalling, hoping deep down that he could come up with anything to persuade me otherwise. I was disappointed."**_

"* Chara, no!" Frisk cried out. They all joined in and rushed after the two of them, but it was as pointless as she said. Asriel tried warping away, but she could simply flicker after him and before he knew what was coming, a shot fired straight onto his stomach made him struggle for air and while he was still flinching from that, she flickered back and forth between different angles and sides stabbing him again and again. Each time, his body shook and drifted apart the way Monsters' did when you heavily damaged them, and after a fifth strike, Asriel could feel it. Everyone could feel it. He died. He felt nothing more than the wish for Monsters to live on and have another chance, but it didn't mean much when the light of his life was fading. "* Asriel!" While Frisk cried out in desperation, it probably wasn't all rainbow and sunshine to Chara either, but whether out of complete insanity, or in an attempt to process what she was doing, she began to laugh. Laugh hysterically.

She continued. _**"Swordsman Asriel? The absolute god of hyperdeath? Try Desperada Chara. The Doomsday Gu - wait..."**_ Completely dumbfounded, Chara paused and looked around herself. She wasn't outside of the ruined building, looking down onto the collapsing corpse of a too lively flower. Frisk, Asriel, Sans, Undyne, Papyrus, Alphys, she was standing between all of them. Asriel was standing in front of him and he was completely fine. The sky was still mostly dark and only gradually lighting up in the currents of power they were releasing. _**"...didn't We just do this?"**_ Just as surprised as her, Asriel looked around, inspected his hands and his robe. It was still clean. It was like everything since Chara first attacked him hadn't happen. It was almost like... ** _"No! This doesn't make sense. This shouldn't be possible! How? Who?"_** Chara struggled to come up with an explanation. But much like the other three that could remember anything happen, she soon had a hunch. _**"You!"**_ Her body turned limp, and her head, with no part of her neck or her shoulders moving to accommodate, her head twisted around to shoot Frisk a deadly glare with those empty caverns that were her eyes. Even long after all of this, none of us can tell with certainty. We all only had feelings and ideas. None of us knew for sure. The closest thing to an explanation I can come up with until now, is that somehow, Frisk's and Asriel's wills, their wish to have at least a chance at creating a future for Monsters, aligned so strongly, that their determination acted as if it was one. And allowed them to LOAD back to a point that either Chara or they had inadvertently SAVEd at.

Something strange had happened. A miracle you could say. After Asriel throwing everything at Chara he could think of, having to come up with new things just to fend off her disturbing-looking attacks, she drove him to the end of what this form of his had to offer and killed him. And somehow, now, they were all standing there the way they had in the beginning. Time had been LOADed back to the beginning of their fight. _**"You!"**_ In a manner that terrified several people around, this grown woman's head turned without the least bit of movements of the rest of her accompanying it, which made her neck and upper shoulders stretch in a way that added to how unsettling her face looked. She faced Frisk and two black, empty eye-sockets stared right at him. _**"An exception. An anomaly that won't repeat itself. That must be what it is."**_ With an inkling of what was coming, Frisk stepped back and tried to move away while the head that was stretching it's neck to ridiculous and obscure degrees came closer and closer to him without Chara actually going anywhere. But it happened too fast for him to dodge without knowing beforehand. An oversized human rib with flesh still sticking onto it, shot out of the ground, pierced the child's torso and dug itself right through him to have it's tip break through his upper chest. He stood no chance at dodging this the first time.

Chara proceeded to follow up with some words to demoralize the others. **_"Swordsman Asriel? The absolute god of...again?"_** This time, she realized a lot sooner that things had reversed themselves back to the point where her and Asriel's adult forms first faced each other. _**"How?"**_

With newfound spirit, almost cheering on a phenomenon he couldn't explain, Asriel bolded his fist and took one step forward. "* It must be our determination! Our hearts are connected! We can bring you back to our senses. Together!"

Chara remained silent for a few seconds. Reflecting on what to do when faced with complications she couldn't explain. All the lengths she had to go through to negative around the skeleton were no problem. The skeleton seemed invincible at first glance, but everything Sans was capable of followed a set of rules. And like finding an approach within the rules of a game, there was always an approach she could think of that would get her where she wanted to go. This didn't follow the rules. Not any that she was aware of at least. So she needed to strike in the dark. Make guesses on how these previously unknown rules worked and move on from there.

She tried immediately killing Frisk a few more times just to be sure, but it achieved the same result as before - namely the lack thereof. For all that mattered, they could control time the way the most determined person could just fine. _**"So all I can guess is..."**_ , she finally announced. _ **"...that Your determination is somehow surpassing it's limits. And if it is 'overclocking', it can be worn down."**_ Everyone braced themselves when the rays that were about to light up the sky, drew together and closed in on Chara again. When they filled the area between the piles of rubble that surrounded everyone else, they seeped back onto and into Chara, converging slowly into one lengthy flash of white light. As soon as it did that, some kind of outgrowth was forcing her way through the skin of Chara's upper right arm, until her skin burst open and a human corpse, similarly lacerated to the ones she summoned before, while still attached to her arm, grew out of it. Which prompted everyone back off for a few steps. She began laughing as the same happened to her left arm. And then through both her skin and the skin of that body, another starved human broke out under unhealthy-sounding gasps and heaves. As more and more human bodies burst out - all thriving but all seamlessly attached to her arms, Chara's head and upper body stretched her jacket and the rest of her attire while she swelled up and grew taller and wider, quickly giving her a deformed, obese shape and the shape of her head grew wider to accommodate. Asriel panicked and began teleporting everyone out into the open, at a safe distance from her.

Further off on varying patches of earth and broken concrete, they looked back in horror, as Chara's leather jacket somehow shriveled up and under a torrent of blood, exploded to turn into a 'growing' poncho that covered her still growing body. The extension of her arms through more and more corpses growing out of the ones that were already there, continued until they began taking up the shape of two giant arms made up entirely of joined-together starving, disfigured and wounded humans. Her pistol merely grew and the glowing in the colours of her souls became more prominent in the rounds kept ready to fire in it's barrel. Her kitchen knife scaled itself up to accommodate the size of her hands, but the blade turned so big compared to it's grip, it was more like an axe or an oversized butcher's knife.

Asriel could tell she was going to go all-out. Despite it being a life-and-death-situation as it was, everything up until here was mostly play-pretend, inspired by stories they had read and games they had played. He should have expected this. In a much faster, not remotely as disturbing fashion, he withdrew the power that visibly filled the air around them as well, causing the remaining lights that filled the sky to converge in him, stretched out his body and took on the shape he had made up long ago. A leg-less, giant black-and-white angel with wings that spanned more than the entire width of the destroyed facility's compound and shone with patterns in all the colours of the souls that powered him. The heart symbol that outlined a soul was engraved on his gloves and the orb at his centre, and he retained the spikes of his black armour pieces. Meanwhile, Chara caught up with his size. Her Stetson 'deflated' - it shrank together and went up in a bloody explosion as if the hat itself was made of flesh, to leave behind a significantly wider sombrero that seemed to stick to the back of her head and when seen from the front, almost encircle it like a halo. Kitchen knives hung off strings at the outer ring of it, each of them tiny compared to Chara's whole size, but in and of themselves large enough to pierce through a grown human's chest.

Asriel knew that considering what prevented everything up to this point from just ending with his death, required Frisk somehow. She would target him and keep doing so even from now on. He had to take measures to protect him. He had nothing but his white gloves as of this moment. He was floating in the air, unarmed. And the corners Chara had previously pushed him into, gave him an idea of what to do about this. He summoned a sword - a runeblade like the one he had to make to destroy Chara's cluster of mashed-together human body parts. Large enough to be bigger relatively to his hands, than a regular chaos saber, but small enough that he could still wield it with one hand. This way, his left hand was open. To match the sword, he created a shield big enough to cover almost all of him. It had the shape of a kite shield and much like the sword, was black and covered in runes glowing in the same colours his wings had. He checked to see what Chara was doing, but she was just staying in place, laughing, more and more human bodies bursting out of her arms to grow those as well. She didn't seem to care much for what Asriel did.

He floated to the side of the now miniscule-looking bunch of Monsters that surrounded the one person that could help him sort this out, swung his blade and rammed the tip of it into the ground, a basic safe distance away from them. "* Frisk!" His giant form spoke in multiple voices, a bit like Chara, but in a coherent choir that spoke 'unison' compared to the terror her voice struck into the heart of anyone who heard her. The human nodded. He had an idea of the situation, even with what little input he had on all of this, and began to run. He began to run up the length of Asriel's blade. "* Knives!"To Asriel's shock, he only noticed when it was too late. The knives had torn themselves off of Chara's hat and were floating straight with their blade pointed to Frisk. He could invoke a volley of magic attacks that shot some of them down, but not all of them. He was relieved to see though, that Frisk still had a lot of his old dodging skills and knew when to stop and when to move slightly to which side to escape the pointy objects headed for him, until they had all crashed into Asriel's sword and disappeared. Eventually, the human could climb onto the white glove. Asriel changed his arms to be solid, so Frisk could climb up on them, onto one shoulder and from there onto the other. "* You safe?" When Asriel could feel Frisk sit down and get a good grip on two of the spikes on his shoulderpieces, the human nodded, signaling him to pull the sword out of the ground, raise his shield with which he could now easily protect Frisk and brace himself for Chara's inevitable assault.

When she was done bringing her undulating arms to their full size, with two more bloody bursts, her back ripped itself open and two giant human spines grew out of them. And out of them unnaturally long ribs to form a macabre likeness to an angel's wings. Slowly, with blood still dripping off her back, Chara floated upwards and turned to be face to face with Asriel. Coming closer until they were both above the forest near the compound. With her mouth closed but smiling, Chara raised her right arm and the knife her right hand held, began to glow in deep red the way it had before. "* Up! Right! Asriel move!" Frisk patted Asriel's shoulder, and only just in time, the angel realized that he was given directions on how to move. Sure enough, when he had followed up, Chara swung down her arm and where her knife sliced the air, a deep red crescent remained drawn in the air and moved their way in a diagonal alignment that Asriel only barely escaped.

"* Chara, stop! It doesn't have to end this way!" Chara's wings swung forward and she gained some distance from them. "* Stop this! We can solve it somehow! Just come with us!" Even now - especially now that their battle consisted of larger, but slower movements, Asriel tried to talk to her.

 _ **"This world's decay is a fate set in stone."**_

"* Maybe we can change it!" He had to follow Frisk's directions and move aside, as Chara sent another deep-red wave his way. He ran out of patience for a moment and screamed at her. "* Listen to me!" While he did, he raised his shield and summoned a barrage of stars - a downright armada that shot straight her way. Chara did the same she did before, and merely matched the intensity she was faced with. Rows of transparent gunslingers manifested in the sky, only the stars and far-above explosions shining through, pointed their firearms at the moving stars and shot them. The ear-shattering thunder must have been heard far and wide, all the way to neighbouring villages and towns. The earth shook so much, the Monsters on the ground couldn't hold their balance. Asriel had to devote a little power to holding Frisk in place. The small stars that spread out in all directions from each exploding star, hammered at Asriel's shield, forcing him back. Chara devoted both hands to parrying them all with both her weapons.

 _ **"You would need all of humanity to pull on one string!"**_ By the time it was over, Asriel had backed off so far, he was long floating above the dark forest. _**"And they are too spineless for a single one of them to help you!"**_ And Chara was moving straight towards him. As soon as she was in range, she pointed her revolver at him and began laughing. While it began glowing more and brightly, a wide ring shining in rainbow colours manifested around the end of the barrel and shrank down, until it disappeared in her cylinder. The moment it was shining so bright it hurt to look at it, she pulled the trigger and had to brace herself to be able to bear the recoil. A bullet of multi-coloured light shot through the air between them. Asriel had raised his shield, but the force was so strong, it pressed through the shield enough to hurt his arm, he was pushed back quite a distance and the force just from the shockwave that resulted from the shield making the combined force of her bullet spread in several directions, felled and ripped the closest trees off their stumps and could still be seen from trees pushed to one side far and wide.

"* Frisk is helping me!" Asriel followed Chara's movements when the bloated monstrosity floated higher up and began facing the compound. "* No!"

The same coloured ring appeared around her gun and began closing in on it's barrel and cylinder again. _**"Only because he has had a taste of what it feels like."**_ She raised her weapon and pointed it straight towards the area where their Monster friends were standing. Unless Sans moved them all out of harms way, she was going to shoot them all down from up here. He moved upwards into a position to intercept her attacks. _**"To be at the receiving end."**_ He made sure his shield was intact. It was an extension of his power for the most part, so it restored itself in the same way that their attacks disappeared once no longer used most of the time. _**"Of humanity's complacency."**_ He raised his shield.

But what was different from last time, was that along with the first one, two more rings of light formed around Chara's revolver. To make sure he knew, Frisk warned him. "* Asriel! She shoots three times!" Each time she fired, the recoil forced Chara's arm back and made her take a moment to aim again. Each time, Asriel had to move in position to catch the bullet with his shield, each time he had to put all the power he could muster into blocking it and felt shaken all over. Each time - even from up here - the diffused force alone was enough to send a wave across the trees below, a bit like a drop falling on a still body of water. It didn't even work every time. They failed several times, but somehow, their determination LOADed them back to just before she first pulled the trigger. Once the barrage was done, he backed off from the obscuring cloud that had formed in the air where the bullets hit him. "* Asriel! Parry!" He didn't think much about it and simply reacted by holding his sword in front of him.

He was warned, yet still completely shocked at the extreme force that pushed him back pretty far by this monstrosity shooting out of the cloud. He had to put a lot of his concentration and his power just into applying upwards pressure to his sword, to prevent her from pushing it out of the way with her axe-like knife and making him lose the stalemate. Where their blades sawed at each other, sparks shot out, glowing in various colours. And those hollow depths that were where Chara's eyes and mouth were supposed to be, now stared at Asriel right from up close. _**"His determination means nothing. It didn't last against the skeleton. It won't last against me! We will continue to fight until you break down and I can put an end to our impending misery before it begins!"**_

Asriel had to take a firm stance. He mustered up the force to push her back quite a bit. "* You won't! I believe you can know better. I believe you know better! You know better!"

 _ **"Nonsense!"**_ Chara pulled her arm to the side and forced their blades to separate, only for her to swing her knife right at him again. _**"Even if that were true, it would be pointless. And it would be worse!"**_ The closer she got to him, the more she terrified him. _**"They will keep Mother and Father apart! They will use her to get at him! They will persuade her into thinking she was wronged and right to turn on everyone. They will take all the riches Monsters have! They will force you into contracts and loans you cannot escape from! They will strip you of all hope and make you watch and wallow in your misery as family after family - accident after accident - isolated incident after isolated incident - are slowly degraded and destroyed, taking everything from and then killing all Monsters until there is nothing - no humans - no Monsters. Until their barren, 'diverse' hellscape in which only Orcs exist, is all that is left of this world."**_

Again, she forced their blades apart, only to swing at him and clash with him again. _**"You will spend a meaningless eternity as a flower - unable to die - forced to watch powerlessly as everyone you love and learn to love is drawn apart, ostracised, deprived of any life perspective, isolated and has their livelihoods taken from them, lest they buy into their lies, walk into their traps and be killed!"**_ And once more their blades separated and clashed. Tears started welling up in those empty caverns and trailing down her cheeks. _**"I don't want this either, Asriel! I just don't want you to have to live through all of this! If there was any hope for Mother and Father to stay together - any hope for Monsters to live happily, I would take it!"**_ Even the lower opening that was her mouth, trembled with the motions of a little girl crying. _**"If I had the faintest spark of belief that it could go any other way, I would side with you! But there isn't! I don't want to see you suffer this fate!"**_ The air itself around her began to tremble, Asriel's vision of her distorted face began to blur. **_"I have to end it before you do!"_**

"* Chara, wait!" With another forward swing of her 'wings', Chara backed off. With her drifting further into the forest, her weapons disappeared and she put her hands together and stretched them out. Within her hands, something appeared. First, it was just a spark of red light, then it grew and shone brighter and brighter. Still with tears running down from her hollow eye-sockets, she began cackling. Frisk patted Asriel's shoulder again. "* Beam!" Asriel knew what he meant. She was charging some enormous beam attack that would kill them if just allowed to go through. He did the same as she did. Increased the distance between them, dispelled his arms and stretched his arms Chara's way. Like with her, a spark of light formed in his hands. But instead of just being blood red, it glowed in a wide range of colours. When a wave around her hands announced the then unleashed ray of blood-red beams that sped his way, he did the same and fired a rainbow-coloured beam of his own that struck and kept away hers. It was an immediate strain on him that took all the bravery he could muster to keep up the pressure, as she wasn't letting up at all. Everything was shaking for both of them. The currents of air and energy surged through the air around. It was deep red like her knife when charged with intent to kill. He couldn't let this attack go through. "* You can do this!" He put all he had into this attack, but even then, he found himself flinching as hers wouldn't stop. Frisk tried to encourage him. It wasn't like he could do much. All the power Asriel could come up with went into trying to force back her beam, but it wasn't enough to gain an inch on her.

He had to hold on. Keeping her attack away drained power reserves he didn't know he had. He was already beginning to give in, when he saw something. The shrieking monstrosity Chara had become, was glowing. Not in red, but in deep blue. More and more frequently. Until he felt the pressure from her attack wane. As did that of his own. She was giving in. Something inside her was stirring and causing her to stop. At least he hoped so. But something else was happening. The more Chara's body glowed in blue, the more things shook more again, in spite of their beams dying down, until everything around Asriel erupted, the world fell apart and the next thing he knew, was him drifting around alone in a pitch-black void. "* What? Frisk?" Frisk wasn't on his shoulder. In fact, there was no giant shoulder to sit on. He gazed at his hands in disbelief. He was back to being a little boy again. Alone and powerless, drifting in the darkness. Then he heard something. Something echoed loudly from above. The folding and flapping of paper, and when he looked up to see what it was, within the darkness, blue folders, easily a hundred times his size were moving about, pieces of paper falling out of them and heading straight Asriel's direction. "* What? What is this?" One of them fell past him, several did. But then one came his way. What was he supposed to do? He was powerless. He was all on his own with nothing to stop this.

"* Move!" From somewhere, he heard Frisk's voice, and felt a hand grab hold of his. The human took him by the hand and 'flew' to the side to dodge the incoming blue sheet. "* Don't let go!" Asriel wasn't sure what was happening, but then again, neither was Frisk, probably. "* I did this before!" Swaths of giant deep blue sheets of paper came their way, and in ways Asriel couldn't hope to keep up with, Frisk somehow navigated through all of them without either of the two getting hit. "* Look for a prompt!" Prompt? What prompt? They spent several more waves just dodging the incoming 'attacks' until the human appeared to spot it on his own. "* There!" He maneuvered the two around two more pieces of paper until they reached a big, orange-glowing button being somehow tossed out of one of the folders. He moved in to 'press' it, but not much happened when it did. The button disappeared and the attacks kept coming. For a while, then they slowed down. Then all of them turned into green bottles of gin. "* Wait...no..." He was about to reach one of them, when they both felt everything shake. It shook so much it felt like they were being torn apart, but when they opened their eyes, they appeared to stand upright in a house. The morning sun was shining through the barely-open blinds. In a living room, on the floor, a suitcase lay open, with some basic clothes and hygiene products inside, as well as a laptop. Then they heard something.

"* Oh god! Oh god! Oh god!" A man in a suit came running down with some CDs and other digital storage units which he quickly slammed into the case, shut the case and opened the front door to leave.

"* Wait...where are we?" Frisk tried to approach him, but he was just dismissed.

"* No time! She is going to get me!" He spurted through the open front door. The two children ran after him. The streets outside were empty. Everything seemed silent. But after a few seconds of the stranger running down the road - presumably to get to his car, he looked up to see the same strange, barely visible currents that seemed to run through the air. "* Oh god! Please no!" Now in complete panic, he ran faster and faster across the pavement. Until the bricks that made up the walkway started to break out of the ground, rose up around him, slammed him from all sides and crushed him so strongly, you could see his blood flood out through the cracks between them as the bricks pressed together and downwards to bury him in the ground. The moment that had happened, everything was engulfed in white light again, and with a strange surge that rushed through their minds, Asriel's and Frisk's eyes shot wide open to find themselves back outside. At night. Above the forest near the destroyed Oldenburg facility. It had all been some sort of dream.

"* What was this?" Asriel - now back to his giant, spiky self, turned his head down to the human sitting on his shoulder. "* What just happened?"

Still trying to wrap his mind around what had just transpired as well, Frisk shook his head. "* I think it was a soul." He pointed at Chara, who - similarly confused - was examining the clusters of rotten bodies she had for hands. "* One of the souls she took tried to break out or help us...Asriel!" He kept a close eye on Chara, who stayed in the air at their height, dumbfounded about what happened. When Asriel and Chara spoke, they practically shouted in multiple voices, in ways in which it was impossible not to hear far and wide. But as far as they were apart, she couldn't hear Frisk, so he listened silently. "* Asriel, that was almost like when you...when Flowey had the six human souls. What if she's like you? What if her mind is just in a bad place right now, and all I have to do..." He was thinking the same thing by that point. "* ...is to SAVE her."

He never stopped staring at Chara, and she had collected herself and was getting impatient. _**"What are you two whispering? Come at me already!"**_

"* So, what are you waiting for?" He gave Frisk a quick look, who seemed to concentrate. When at first nothing happened, he closed his eyes and stretched his hand Chara's way. "* It's not working. I can't get through to her." He took a moment to figure out why. "* I think it's because I don't know any of the souls she took. I never befriended them, so I can't reach them."

They didn't have much time for more, as the monstrum they faced was already closing in on them. Her knife, already large enough to match Asriel's sword as it was, grew so much, she was dragging it behind her, cutting through and brushing aside the trees below, until it was even carving along the ground at the bottom of it. When she closed in on him, she swung it up to strike at him in one uncontrollable swing. The strike shattered the ground below and carved a schism into the woods and a field and a road that lay next to it. Asriel shook his head after he had sped in a different direction just in time to not get hit by this. She had gone completely insane. "* Aww Asriel, I could feel it!" Something was up with Frisk.

"* What?"

"* I almost had her! I could almost SAVE her! I think I just have to get closer!"

He gave the human a concerned look with the one eye he could do it with. "* Closer, huh?" He faced Chara, who turned around with her knife still in her hand, drawing a curve with it as she started moving his way. "* Okay. I'll see what I can do!" With a little more resolve, he startled Chara by heading straight towards her. He stretched out his sword, but didn't raise it. He didn't want her to do anything sudden to block his attack with her knife. Instead, once he was close by, he swung his sword horizontally, struck her pistol, used his shield to push aside her right arm, and rammed his chest against Chara's, giving Frisk a moment of time. The human tried to focus on Chara. He tried to keep in his mind this feeling he got whenever he SAVEd and LOADed. He had to narrow down his focus onto his determination, and then he directed that at her. He could feel it, he was so close, but he wasn't quite there. Paying little mind to it, he jumped. He leaped from one shoulder onto the other, grabbed hold of Chara's poncho, and tried to dedicate all his determination to one single thought. SAVE her. SAVE Chara. He had to SAVE her from that dark place her mind was stuck in. He tried as much as he could to do what he did on that one day the Monsters were freed. And he almost thought he didn't make it.


	56. SAVE THE GIRL

.

Beyond SAVEing

Chapter 06

ERASE THE WORLD

* * *

Frisk woke up. His eyes slammed open, and he felt the bedsheets that covered him. He pushed them off. He was in a bedroom that somehow had a familiar feel to it, but he was certain that this wasn't his bedroom. Where was he? He was in a small children's room. There was a carpet on the floor, the shelves opposite to the bed were filled with baby dolls and little plastic houses, fitted out with plastic toys modeled mostly after tall women with long hair, as well as wide ranges of tiny toy outfits. Something was uncomfortable. It pressed against his right shoulder. Upon looking, he discovered that he was partly lying on another one of those baby dolls. It was dressed in a striped pajama, and one of it's plastic eyes was damaged in a way in which it was stuck on being only half-open. His first thought was that it looked creepy. The moment he thought that though, he reflexively began to press his eyes shut and cover his ears, as his head started to hurt, and an earthquake hit his surroundings. _ **"Do not insult Harry! He gives me company, whenever she drinks!"**_ Chara's demonic voices were seemingly screaming from within his head. The room was dark, but there was an alarm clock shining in the dark that told him that it was afternoon. It only didn't seem that way, because the door was closed and the blinds were down. He got up to change that. As soon as he could really see, he noticed that there was a reason why the first thing that sprang into his eyes were the toys on the other side of the room. The room was practically full of them. It was hard to find a place that wasn't covered in them in some way. _**"Overcompensations! Distractions to keep me sheltered from what lies outside!"**_ Frisk's face turned to the door. It was closed, but light came through the keyhole and the gap below the door. **_"He hoped that she would stop. That this would all go away."_** His head shook so much whenever she spoke, it was impossible to focus on anything other than her voice when she did.

The one part of her room that didn't have any toys either line the ground or the racks of a shelf, was a cupboard, the front side of which had a mirror covering it. When he walked over to them, he noticed something. Upon looking down at his hands and his own clothes, he seemed to be himself. But his reflection in the mirror wasn't. It was Chara. Her face, her skin, her clothes. He even raised a hand and opened and closed it to be sure that it was his reflection and it was. It seemed to be. But once he was done with that, something happened to 'his' face. Much like with Chara before this 'dream' started, his reflection's eyes and mouth retracted inside to leave behind the nightmarish face he had seen by now. And now, she spoke separately from him. _ **"SAVEing Asriel yielded you an important memory of his! You tried the same with me. It is only fair to extend the same courtesy."**_

He opened the door. It looked like a one-storage house. Maybe with an attic at most. He wandered down a hallway. To his right, he peeked through the open door into an emptied-out office. You could tell it was an office, since there was no bed. Only shelves, a table with more shelves and a table with a chair. Below the table was an extension power cable with multiple plugs, like you would expect if there was a computer. There was none. It was emptied out save for a few pictures. _**"He knew that it was best to prepare to leave. As soon as possible. With everything he could."**_ When he figured there wasn't much to see in here, he moved on through the hallway. When when he reached the end, she spoke again. ** _"Daddy's coming home with the papers! You only have to stall for a minute or two. Survive until he unlocks the door!"_** Her laugh echoed through Frisk's mind as he went through the living room.

This room wasn't empty, like the office. The couch, the t.v., everything he expected to be there, was there. On the other side, at the table, sat a familiar figure. He was in disbelief at who it was until he came closer. When he did though, his heart skipped a beat. _**"* Mommy?"**_ It was his mother. His real mother. His real-real mother. She had died long ago, and yet a likeness of her was sitting there.

 _ **"A memory of mine but with mental images ripped from yours!"**_ His biological mother - the real one that raised him for all the time he wished he could go back to - leaned on the table, looking down at a glass. Her long, brown hair covered her face. Her head's movements were somewhat irregular. She glanced over to a bottle of liquor she was holding with one hand. **_"Alcohol. A drug as destructive as all the others. But legal to own and abuse, because humanity lacks the determination to overcome their own addictions."_**

It didn't seem like his mother could hear Chara's voice. But when Frisk took his palms off his head and after she heard him flinch, his mother finally faced him and brushed aside the dark hair that obscured her face before. It was heartwarming to look into those deep, dark eyes once again. His lips trembled. She had dark rings under her eyes, and the focus of her eyes was inconsistent. How much of this stuff had she been drinking? There were multiple empty bottles on the kitchen counter behind her. It was hard to tell at what rate those had been emptied. At first, she appeared charming. "* What's wrong, Chara? Aren't you feeling well?" She addressed him as 'Chara'. For all intents and purposes, he was her. She only gave her parents the appearances of his, to play at his emotions.

 _ **"Why don't you wait with your judgment on that? Until you see the end."**_ And she could read his mind.

Subtly and slowly, the caring alignment of Mommy's eyebrows loosened, she rolled her eyes and turned back to her glass. "* Ugh, what does that even matter?" Ouch. That hurt. "* He could be here any minute now." She downed a whole glass at once. And her stance sitting there fell all the more out of balance for a second. Her voice turned more silent and took on a whine that accompanied her words. "* You'll be gone. I'll be all alone." Mommy tried to shake it off and sighed. "* I't like Janet said. It was all because the judge we got was an old, human, white man."

This wasn't healthy. Or good in any way. He had to distract her. "* Mommy?" The grown woman rested her head on the table, and her hair covered her eyes again, but at least she turned her head his way. They had a t.v. And he spotted a recorder for those old vhs cassettes before. Maybe that was a way. "* Could we watch something together?"

All he got out of it was a tired smile. "* Appreciate it, Chara. But it wouldn't matter now." She turned around again. "* We just wait until your father comes home, and then it'll all be over."

Frisk tried looking for what she was staring at. But it was just the kitchen counter. With a sink, a bread box, a wooden board to cut vegetables on. Nothing much of note. "* No. No no no no no." His mother shook her head. He walked around her to see where she was looking. "* No. There's still time." Mommy was sobbing and breathing irregularly. She got up and headed over to the counter. Once she was out of the way, he saw what she was looking at. Next to the wooden board for cutting vegetables was a knife block. A piece of wood, standing right at the corner between the wall and the counter, with the grips of several kitchen knives of varying sizes looking out. No. Please no. An undeniable cold came over him. With little care, his mother continued to ramble on. "* It's his fault if he doesn't come timely. I'm 'unpredictable', right? I might do anything." She actually went over to the block and picked out the largest knife it held. "* There's no reason why I should let the men win!"

He went over and pulled at her hand. "* Wait! Mommy! We can stay together! We can stay together as a fa...argh"

He pulled together again as Chara's voice shook through his skull. _**"There is no use. Her lawyer Janet long convinced her that there can be no 'together' with him. He is a man and she convinced her that men are the enemy!"**_ Frisk managed to open his eyes for a second to see the lumbering, unrecognizable woman hold the knife with it's blade pointing downwards. He fought on against her voice and ran through the living room. _**"That all of the enemy is conspiring with one another. That the enemy is winning. And that now she must fight back the only way she can!"**_

By the time her voice stopped and Frisk had a moment to look back, his mother was already towering over her. With shaky, only varyingly distinct movements, she came closer, grabbed him be the shoulder and forced him on the ground. He tried and failed to push her away, he begged for his life again and again. "* Don't worry, Chara. It won't hurt for long." Her eyes were never fully open. Until in that one moment, when they forced themselves open to give him a frantic stare - almost a grin, when she raised the knife, swung it and buried it in his chest. The pain struck veins in all of his body, and it didn't subside. She stabbed him several times until his light finally faded.

He woke up in darkness. Not Chara's room in the dark. Complete darkness. The surface he was lying on was liquid, but somehow none of the liquid stuck to him. In fact, he didn't drift through it like he thought with how he couldn't feel any solid floor. He winced at the mere memory of the pain. Experiencing his own mother kill him in cold blood. "Only once? Weakling." He heard Chara's voice, now mostly normal. Steps echoed on the water, and somehow, once close enough, he could see her. Back to her normal self. For now. "Game Over. You failed. Even the easy part."

Frisk got up and made sure none of the liquid remained on him. "* Is this what you wanted to show me?"

She shook her head. A grin crept up her mouth. "Oh no. We are nowhere near being done."

"* Is this why you want to erase the world?"

"Probably a rough fingerpointer towards it. But no. This is not the reason. If I was the only one, that would not warrant that." Somehow, she got taller mid-sentence. "In fact." So did her arms, and where the sweater didn't cover her skin, he saw that her skin was peeling off, bleeding out and revealing her sinew. "You will see the first other one, should you win the first part." Right when she was turning into some stretched-out nightmare creature, a pale arm shot out of the 'floor', grabbed Frisk by the hair and pulled him down to drown him. The moment he wasn't breathing, he woke up in Chara's bed again. Again in the dark, again with the light shining through the keyhole. ** _"You will repeat this day until you survive it. Just like I had to. Don't be killed, that is all you need to do."_**

Spending a lot less time on looking around and more on seeing if it really was the same day, he opened the door and walked straight outside. The office was still empty, and at the other side of the living room, his mother still sat with a glass and a bottle of liquor. It was the exact same 'scene' from before. "* Chara. How are you?" Again, she sighed, again she rolled her eyes. "* Not that it matters now." When she was about to lay her head down facing the opposite wall again, he placed his hand on her shoulder to be a bit more insistent in getting her attention. She did. She rested her head on her arm and brushed her hair outside. He asked her again if she wanted to watch something with him. "* Appreciate it, Chara. But it wouldn't matter now." He was losing her. She was turning around already. He rushed around the table, grabbed a chair and sat between her and the knife block.

"* Mommy, are you alright?" He knew the answer, but he had to start off a different route somehow.

She placed a hand on his cheek and smiled. "* It'll all be okay.", she mumbled in a melodious tone. He tried pulling a different bottle closer and offered to pour her a glass of mineral water. "* No, no thank you. You just go and wait in your room." He refused to get up. Chara said that he had to stall. And suddenly, the drunk woman's expression took a turn for the grim. "* What's going on? What are you hiding?" Still resting on her hand, she started supporting herself on her elbow. When Frisk managed to stay between her and the knives, she sat upright, and ended up seeing them. That was when her expression relaxed. "* Of course. I don't have to let him take you." No, no no. He had to stop her. He grabbed her by the hand and tried to keep her in place. "* Let go of me! Wait, no! Stay right. With. Me." She broke free of his grip but grabbed him by the arm with one hand, while she pulled out one of the kitchen knives with the other. Once she had both him and the knife, she forced him onto the ground. "* Now be a good girl and hold still!" He struggled and begged, but again, she stabbed him to death.

She stabbed him multiple times until he gave in from the pain and woke up again. Alone. In Chara's room. He really was going to have to go through this day again and again until he got it 'right'. Again he went to the table, again he sat between her and the knife block, but this time, he tried being a bit more direct. He poured his mother a glass of water and held her hand. "* Mommy. Please. Have some water." She thanked him, but declined. When he tried again, she barely moved. "* I want you to get better. Please, this has to stop." He tried to get hold of her liquor, but the surge of pain that followed getting a literal slap on the wrist made him withdraw his hand.

And the moment he pulled back, similarly, but so much it shocked him, she slapped his face. "* Don't tell me what to do! God, you sound so controlling. Just like him."

She laid her head onto her arm. A good sign. Maybe her being agitated like that exhausted her just enough to fall asleep. _ **"He was NOT controlling. Nobody even thought that until Janet told her so."**_ He sat there quietly. Watching her fall asleep. If Chara was honest with him, he only had to hold out for long enough and this would be over.

He waited. Waited and waited and eventually, to his relief, he heard the lock of the front door turn. You could hear it opening from everywhere, and Frisk immediately got up and rushed to the front door. It was just like with his mother. "* Chara, come here my girl!" With a case placed on the floor and smiling at her with open arms, stood his father. His real, biological father, whom he hadn't seen in so long. He was so happy, he cried. He ran into his arms, hugged him and sobbed into his shoulder. "* It's okay. Daddy's here now." He knew this wasn't real. But he wished to see them again so much. "* Everything's going to be fine."

 _ **"Everything is NOT going to be fine."**_

Frisk was as shaken as his father audibly was, albeit for different reasons. "* Stand behind me, Chara!", he commanded.

In front of them, half-way staring at the floor, with her hair messed up and partly hanging over her face, stood his mother. Now with that kitchen knife in her hand he was trying to keep her away from. "* How dare you, Henry." Henry? That had to be Chara's father. His had a very different name. Still with her lack of balance, she stumbled forward and straight to Frisk. "* You are not taking her away from me!" Frisk started hyperventilating and desperately grabbing for anything behind him, but it was just a wall with a coat hanger above. She started screaming and running straight at him.

"* What are you doing? Stop!" His father stood straight, grabbed her by both arms. She had already scratched a wall next to Frisk by the time his father grabbed solid hold of both her wrists. "* You're out of your mind! Calm down." It took a solid lengthy struggle, during which Frisk slowly retreated outside and into safety, for his father to force that knife out of his mother's hand and drag her inside. "* Chara!, come in! Daddy's got it under control!"

"* How dare you! Help!" During the brief moment in which they were almost outside, his mother screamed loudly. "* Help! I'm being assaulted!" Luckily enough, this all slowly came to an end. His father pulled the door shut, forced his mother to sit on the couch, and didn't let go of her while he fetched the phone. "* How dare you hurt me like this! Let go!" Several times while this happened, she tried to break free or reach for the knife.

Frisk was beside himself. He wasn't even crying. He had retreated into a corner between the living room and the corridor that led to Chara's room. He was in shock. Doing nothing other than watching closely at what transpired. Why would she do this? Why would she want to kill him? What would drive her to think in a way that made that seem like a good decision? _ **"Selfishness! Selfishness and the poisonous whispers of a greedy lawyer! Even contrary to any sane reason, she feels that she is in the right!"**_ With dread, he faced the crazed look that was in his mother's eyes by now. _ **"To lose me, is to lose out on a lot of Daddy's money, which she could spend on frivolities as she wastes away."**_

"* No." Broke out of him. "* I refuse to believe this. Life can't be like this!"

His father was wondering who he was talking to, but he didn't pay that much attention. _**"It didn't have to be like this. If humans dug their heel in, it wouldn't. But it is. Humanity's complacency allowed for this to happen."**_

A lot of time passed. Without him having much opportunity to change things and without Chara interjecting anything. Frisk finally took the time to bury his face in his hands. To blend out everything else and work through what was happening. Going through this himself was one thing. Chara wasn't nice to make him go through this with the faces of his own parents. But how must this have been for her? For her, all this really happened. And she had to live knowing that it happened for all of her life. No wonder she was obsessed with kitchen knives and stabbing people. This never let her go. He knew it didn't match this cowboy-get-up she was going for with him and Asriel. If he had gone through an all-changing day like this, he might have ended up obsessed with cutting and stabbing people with kitchen knives as well. His father had called for the police. Mommy was getting too dangerous. He couldn't leave Frisk alone like this. She was dangerous. He admitted on the phone that he was keeping her restrained.

While remaining quiet enough for her parents not to hear him, he tried to talk to Chara. "* This is it, right? The police are going to take her. They're going to somehow help her get better and this will end differently!" He practically begged her for this to be it. But all that happened, was a pain. A pain on his head. Something grabbed him by his hair and pulled him up. His view darkened and an immediate feeling of drowning overcame him.

He was dragged out onto the dark sea he had been before. The rusty taste of human blood revealed to him what the liquid in this pitch-black place was. Chara, still stretched in abominable ways, her clothes torn, grinned at him with her nightmarish face. _**"I too wish it had ended there! Would life not just be wonderful? If it did. It did not."**_ She laughed. _ **"Let me show you the wonders that women's rights campaigners created! Let me show you what dominant aggressor laws cause to happen!"**_ With this, she pressed him down into the liquid again, drowned him in blood and after feeling himself run out of air, his eyes shot open and he was back in the house. His parents were still here. Waiting for the police. Until the bell rang, and they went to the door. A few officers stood outside. In front of the police's eyes, his mother made no efforts to grab the knife that was still lying on the floor.

"* Thank goodness, you're here."

When the officer, a bit of a burly one and a smaller one next to him, stepped in, something was off about the expressions they showed when they faced either one. "* I'm here because of a domestic dispute. You would be a Mr...Henry Ironside."

"* Yes sir."

"* Lady, is this man giving you trouble?" What? His father had let go of her, and she stepped closer to the two officers. "* Has he been violent to you?"

Suddenly, within the few seconds in which the officers arrived, his mother went from raving mad, drunk killer to terrified victim in how she spoke and acted. "* Yes, thank goodness you came! He came in here and grabbed me! He held me captive and injured my wrists! See?" She held up both her wrists, now bruised from Frisk's father holding them to keep her from stabbing her own child to death. First that episode from before, and now lying like this. Why was she so scrupulous?

 **"I keep telling you! Selfishness and the poisonous whispers of her attorney!"**

"* All right, sir. I'm going to have to place you under arrest for bodily injury and probable cause for kidnapping and breaking and entering." He knew what was strange. They seemed hostile to his father from the start.

"* What? But I called you! My wi..."

"* Your wife will be safe from you here, while we take you to the precinct, now be so nice as to come with us." Neither Frisk, nor his father could believe what was going on here. "* Calm down sir, once he gets there, you can make your case before the magistrate. No need to break out of standard procedure. I wouldn't get so worked up, sir. It's probably only gonna be a charge. I'm just gonna need you to be nice and cooperative." The officers giggled at each other while they forcibly pulled him outside.

"* Wait! No! That's now how it..." He tried to protest, but the bigger one of the officers was already forcing him to stand against the wall to handcuff him and the shorter one had already pulled out his gun to point at him. "* ...wait! She's dangerous! She tried to kill my daughter! Chara! Run!"

Frisk trembled. He stretched his hand out towards his father, in disbelief over these policemen pulling 'Henry' into the car. "* Why? How?"

 _ **"Laws campaigned for by resentful, lonely women! And humanity simply allowed for it. Don't blame those two officials. They too are guilty, but not as much as you think. Whenever the police is called because of a home dispute of any nature. ANY NATURE. They are forbidden from arresting the woman. And they are forbidden from NOT arresting the man. Regardless of the circumstances. They have no choice."**_

Terrified, he then looked up. At the looming face of his mother. She had locked the door and was keeping the only key he knew of in her hand. Calm and collected - and most importantly, unarmed, she walked up to Frisk. "* Now that that is settled. How about we watch something together?" Really? This seemed a little too easy. But as long as she was with him, she couldn't go back to the kitchen to get a new knife. The two sat down on the couch and turned on the television. The silence between them, more of a kind of confusion and helplessness before, was now wrought with terror. Over and over, he turned around to make sure she hadn't gotten up without him noticing as he zapped through channel after channel.

It was unavoidable though. She did get up eventually, and she did head for the kitchen. At once, he was fully alarmed. He had to do as he was told and run. There was no way to survive without running. _ **"There is, and running will get you nowhere! I tried more times than I would like to admit!"**_ He refused to listen to her and picked one window leading to a small porch looking over what little of a garden they had, which he opened. He stumbled and almost fell when he left. Half of the porch was broken down and had fallen by over a metre. As had everything in their little garden. In fact, everything had fallen a bit in various directions. The entire district, all of his surroundings were just a few jumbled 'islands' floating in a dark void. He had to make do with this. The garden took a pretty steep way up, from where he had to take a little slope through a bit of cross-section of the ground below to land on the street next to the house.

"* How dare you!" A shrill voice boomed throughout the area. He began to run but felt the earth shake. It was his mother's voice, and once he ran down the street, to a point where a tilted-up neighbouring 'island' had grinded up the one he was on, climbed onto the next piece and looked back. Out of the roof of Chara's house broke a twenty-foot-long arm. Pale in skin and obscured by a black, thick but fluid substance running down along it's length. The arm had extremely long fingernails and was holding a giant bottle of that same liquor that was on the table. Soon enough another arm of matching size broke out through the roof, wielding a knife. And together, both crushed a nearby garage on one side and a nearby car on another, supported themselves, and helped the rest of the giant, rotting creature get up and destroy what was left of the house. A lot of his 'mother's hair had fallen out, her eyes had taken on a menacing grey tone, what little of all of her skin peeked out through the black goo had an unhealthy tone of grey and her teeth were visibly unclean. He turned around and began to run for his dear life. Up the tilted-up roads past car after car, single-family house after single-family house. In a 'real' state, this was some suburb, but everything was empty. Even the cars were simply abandoned yet standing in the middle of the road. "* Come back here, Chara!", the giant woman screeched. The ground shook with every hand and every foot she placed on the ground. And from the rhythm, he could tell she was practically crawling after him.

 _ **"Stop!"**_ He followed what she said, only to see the beverage his mother had brought with her shoot past him, and crash right into a glass house he had been just about to pass by, causing it to collapse and flooding the area with it's contents. It filled the air with the stinging smell of heavy alcohol. The moment that was done though, he turned around only to see the creature move his way with a new bottle. It was no good. He had to keep running. He put a lot of focus on not stumbling on the highly uneven pavement. It was riddled with potholes. He was lucky he made it this far with the ground shaking every time she rammed her knife into the ground, audibly causing whatever building she hit to collapse. The platform he was on became less steep, the further he ran. In fact, it was curved, and once at the top, he found himself running downhill.

A whole new fear took hold of him when he stopped hearing his mother come after him, the moment she reached the top. Then, with another rumble going through his surroundings, he lost his balance and fell over. The rough pavement hurt his back, but he got back up - at least on all fours, until he shrugged together from seeing this terrifying creature move into his eyesight from above. The dark monster landed on the pavement, with a crush so heavy, the entire piece the two of them were on, broke off. He grabbed hold of a hydrant and within seconds, even the piece they were on, while falling downwards through this empty void, fell apart. He didn't have much of a choice but to hold on. The draft from being in a free fall was so strong, letting go meant losing hold. He was holding onto it with his arms and legs. To his horror, after struggling a bit from almost falling down past him, she grabbed hold of a nearby falling platform - still with her knife in her hand, while her other hand managed to tilt what little pavement was left around him by landing her elbow on it. "* This won't hurt for long!" She screamed in an eerie resemblance to the first time he heard her say these words.

"* Chara! I get it! Make it stop!" Seeing the rising head of this beast scared him so much, he couldn't even look. He closed his eyes and kept calling for her to stop this. But nobody came. Soon enough, these giant fingers crushed his legs from several sides to pin him in place, just before this blade closed in to cut him in half. He only felt the beginning. After that, he woke up, back in Chara's bed at the beginning of the day. He got up at once and walked over to the mirror. "* This didn't really happen."

His reflection - predictably not himself but Chara, smiled as so often with her creepy face. "No. I was merely making a point. I tried running away - at various points - much more often than you would care to. It isn't the solution. Sometimes she takes a few seconds. Sometimes she takes a few minutes. Sometimes you believe you escape, only for someone to find you and bring you back to her hours later." She tilted her head. "There is no place like home after all, is there?" He sighed. Maybe she had a point. He just had to play her game. He had to survive the day. That couldn't be impossible, could it? By this point, at least he had figured out roughly how to navigate to stall for long enough for his - no, for Chara's father to arrive. The next part proved much more difficult. For fear of Chara turning the surrounding area into a inescapable nightmare again, he skipped out on any approaches that involved running away. The solution had to be found in here. Over and over, he played along, he explored some variation, and eventually died, only for it to begin again. If you didn't mention watching something together with her, she didn't try to sit you down on the settee immediately. Sometimes, she even let you go into your room, unless she heard you turn the blinds up. He tried putting up the blinds before leaving Chara's room the first time, but her mother saw through that, by the time the police had taken his father away.

With each death, the pain from getting stabbed by a likeness of his real mother didn't weaken at all. But attempt after attempt, he got to know Chara's mother more and more. He got to know what music she liked to listen to. Which t.v. programs she enjoyed watching. What kind of shows she enjoyed enough to rewatch them. In attempts where he knew which show to put on and what to say, he even got her to not go for that knife until the father arrived. Seeing him seemed to make her angry. It was a deep-seeded, silent anger. The kind of silent anger that made you expect it to turn out that he was in some way lying to or conspiring against her. Meaning she couldn't openly talk about it lest she make a mistake in front of 'the enemy'. But he couldn't spot anything like that in his father. If it weren't for Chara outright telling him that it was because of how Janet had pitted her and riled her up against her soon-to-be ex-husband, he would have been a lot more confused. Chara must have been a lot more confused when all this happened to her.

As he slowly began to run out of ideas, he began to turn more and more resigned. Eventually, after being stabbed one too many times for his patience to last, he got back up from Chara's bed and walked to the mirror to talk to her. "* What are you not telling me?" There had to be some component to her game that he either didn't understand, or that she simply omitted.

Her hollow eye-sockets stared at him with little understanding to be read out of their alignment. **_"You are progressing much faster than I did. Your experience with reliving conversations shows. But no offense. You are weak. In the mental sense. You lack a certain kind of spine. I said you have to survive the day. And you have to do it without running away from this place."_** She began to smile. _**"You have to survive. You. Nobody said anything about her surviving."**_

It felt like his heart was being pulled down the entire height of his body. He had feared something like this. He suppressed it. He hoped with all that he had that this wasn't where this was headed. "* No." Barely noticing that he did, he was stumbling backwards, just due to her saying this.

 _ **"Yes. Did you never wonder, where Asriel first had the idea from? My overall approach to things. If I recall it correctly, 'Kill or be killed' is what he called it. In this case, it finds a very literal application. Faced with having to live alone and without a sufficient flow of money to show for her divorce, she is dead set to get back at him. She can't overpower him. She can't kill him. But she can kill you. This is why all this happens. Her vindictiveness turns it into a law-of-the-jungle scenario. Her survival is your death. Your survival is hers."**_

"* No! You can't make me do this."

 _ **"You were in to see a memory of mine. It is a mere glimpse. But the most defining one I can think of. Everything that followed in my life and in the underground, was a conclusion of this one day."**_

"* I don't want to. There's got to be some other way."

 _ **"Go then! Run! Run to her and try at your heart's content. I died to her so many times. I have only ever felt on the inside like a thousand dead bodies merged into a single one ever since. If you find any route I didn't take and make me believe it could have worked, I will let it pass."**_ He went over there and tried a lot of things. _**"This is going to take another thirty- of fourty thousand attempts at this rate."**_ It didn't last that much. But it lasted quite a bit. Frisk tried a lot of things. Even a lot of smaller variations between an approach that involved physical contact and ensuring her over and over, that this wouldn't be the end. He had a better grasp of the situation and more of an idea of what to say. _**"It is really insulting to see you imply I hadn't tried that"**_ , the disturbing voice commented when he died one of many times with this route. He even tried some cruel approaches, staying distant from her or even telling her that they won't see each other any more. Nothing worked.

He was grasping at straws and only trying variations of things he had already tried. When he was as silent and resigned as she needed him to be, she finally spoke again. _**"I can't keep watching and you can't keep trying. So I will help you. I will give you a little guide. A walkthrough, if you want to call it that. The first step to defending oneself, is to arm oneself."**_ He didn't acknowledge her, but he did find himself glancing at the knife block on his way to the table. _ **"No, that is a trap. Taking one from there will only end with her noticing. There are a lot more knives, similar, some almost as big, in the drawer to the right."** _ He saw the drawer when he walked around the table to sit where he sat in his first few tries. He wasn't really intending to follow her instructions, but she went on as if he was anyway. _**"Correct. Do not go for the knives yet. Distract her until Daddy comes home."**_ When he did, she went on. _**"Now is the point where you need to prepare. You know where things go from here. She will sit you down on the settee. She will sit next to you to lure you into a false sense of security. It is there, that she has a false sense of security herself. You are only a child after all. Her baby. You would never do something to her, would you? It is there, that you need a weapon in arm's reach to prove her wrong."**_

Hearing her, going through this again, it made him all the more uneasy than the rest of this situation already made him. His eyes were heavy the entire time. He didn't want to do this. There had to be some other way. _**"And I was proven wrong about that, more times than you can imagine."**_ More and more desperate to find anything he could prove her wrong with, he sobbed. And her father trying to reassure him didn't help. Why would she do this? Why would anyone do this? Why would anyone make someone do this? Why would anyone allow for things to get so bad, a child is forced to do this to her own... _**"There! That is it! You finally understand! At least a glimpse of it! Right now, they are in the way. Open the drawer."**_ Trembling more and more, the closer he came to following up on what she told him, he went to the kitchen and opened the drawer. There was tableware of all kinds, but there wasn't a shortage on knives among them - in a little compartment to the side there were a few as big as one of the bigger ones in the block. **_"When the police arrive, you only have a few moments. Right now, they are in the way. You cannot place a knife under the settee and not be seen by her. You would lose the element of surprise. But you can ready your weapon to place it in the brief moments you have. When the police arrives, when she puts on her disingenuous mask of the battered, innocent wife, she won't notice if you move the knife."_** He could move the knife. He didn't have to use it, right? He could always back out of it. ** _"An understandable rationale, but I did not need it. By the time I explored this route and finally did it, there were no tears left to cry. No eyes left to bat. It all motioned itself through my hands with no hesitation."_** He placed the knife next to the wall, just around the corner so Chara's parents couldn't see it. Then, the police came and - without much thinking, he did as he was told. In those brief moments, when Chara's mother was focused on the police and on putting on a show to watch as the father of her daughter got arrested and taken away, he picked it up and placed it under the couch. He heard Chara's father, bearing the voice of his father, call out to him, telling him to run away. He knew there was no point to that.

There was no escape from this. His breathing turned more and more irregular. Every inch of his body was gripped in this crippling uneasiness as he waited on the couch. No. He didn't want to do this. Chara's mother ignored his sobs when she turned on the TV and came over to sit next to him. He was crying incessantly. He didn't want to do this. He didn't want to do this. He didn't want to do this! Why was there no way out? By the time she noticed him acting irregularly and his time to fend for his life was running out, his body motioned more or less out of reflex. He picked up the knife, gripped it with both hands and rammed it into her stomach. She shrieked out in pain and was in shock, which gave him the time he needed to pull it out and stab her again. "* I'm sorry!" And again. "* I'm so sorry!" And again. "* Please!" He could barely see her through his tears but he kept going. By the time Chara's mother grasped the situation, she had lost too much blood, covering her dress and his clothes, and there was barely any strength left in her hands when she tried to wrestle the knife out of him. "* I don't want to do this!" Mostly out of fear, he kept stabbing her over and over again and only from her movements read that she was growing weaker and eventually fainted. By the time he stopped, there was more 'wound' covering the surface of her than anything else. He let go of the knife, it dropped to the floor, and he collapsed himself. Seeing a likeness of his biological mother come to harm like this - by himself at that - it was too much. He was broken. He cried his heart out just at having seen all this up close. He cried and wanted it all to end. He curled up and stayed there for ages. Was she happy now? She had won. No-one should have to go through this and she made him anyway. Now he just wished he could forget it. He wished he had never seen any of this. He was so sorry. He didn't want any of this!

It was only when he had long been on the floor. Helpless. His face buried into his blood-soaked arms, when someone else wandered from Chara's room to the living room. And a familiar - human - voice, talked to him. "Frisk." A girl - about his height, came closer. "Frisk." It was Chara, and she sounded normal now. No mocking undertones or speaking in multiple voices. Just her in her human appearance.

Frisk screamed at her without moving anywhere. "* Go away!"

"Frisk." She came yet closer and placed a hand on his shoulder. Her voice was calm, and much softer than it had been before. "There is no reason to cry. None of this really happened to you. You did not do this. It is just a memory." He didn't respond. And she gave him time. There was too much going through his mind to focus on a single thought. But if there was one that surrounded everything, it was how she could bear this. "Emotional disconnect. You learn to have it and get over things if you need to." She patted him on the back a few times. "Now come on. Let us move on. We cannot get stuck in one moment." He stayed there for a while, but contrary to his hopes, she didn't leave his side. Eventually, he did get up. When he did, his hands were clean again. And a lot like winding an old vhs tape forward things around them started to move in a fast, blurry fashion - even with entire changes to the location around them, accompanied with Chara describing what it is that was happening around them. "I called the police when it was over. I told them everything. I admitted what I had done and I did so with no hesitation. Since I wasn't aware that I could just consciously 'LOAD' things back, there was no going back from here. So all I could do, was to help my father go free. He didn't go free. Contrary to anything I said, they imprisoned him for murdering my mother. I was sent where you were sent." He was overcome with dread when he saw the decrepit building even if only from the outside. "Aberdeen Orphanage. The place where no child willingly would go. The place most human children never come back from."

"To call life here abuse, would be an understatement. But he was my one refuge from that. For me, that was Theodore." They were in a room with rows of two-storage beds. An image of Chara climbed down the ladder to play with a boy and a set of toys. They depicted a little row of wooden houses. Figurines of horses stood to the side, Stetsons adorned the heads of the human figurines and one of them had a gun. A western setting, a bit like that cowboy film Sal took Frisk to watch in the past. The next place they were at, was one of the bigger halls. "Habib." Three children, different from the others, walked into the room. Only now, Frisk noticed. In a stark contrast to how he remembered Abderdeen, the three boys that came along were the only Orcs he saw in Chara's memory of this place. "One of the first three to be brought here." They surrounded Ted and slowly moved him to a wall so there weren't that many people that came their way, then two of them forcibly grabbed the human by his arms, while Habib - more than a head taller than him, struck out, swung and rammed a fist straight up Ted's stomach. When the other two let go of him, he collapsed and tried to breathe. With things now slowing down to normal, he could hear what was happening. Most of the children stayed away. They kicked the boy for a while, then one of them said something about getting bored of this. When Chara's image walked in to see this, she immediately ran to the struggling boy. He was wheezing and trying to pull away the collars of his shirt and pullover. Chara cried for help. For anyone to get a phone or something like that. But nobody came.

Well, that's not true. Somebody did come eventually. Mrs.. Foster, the caretaker and owner of the orphanage, a woman that had barely changed in fifteen years as Frisk noticed, marched right up to the two, grabbed Chara and pulled her away. "* He is only pretending. Come along now." She was more and more alarmed and tried to pull away. But she was just a little girl. There wasn't much she could do. She was pulled away, forced to watch Ted try to breathe and his struggles for air only be in vain.

"The muscle that steered his lungs was put under shock from Habib's strike. Some first aid or any assistance to keep him breathing for as long as it needed for him to recover would have been enough." Things fast-forwarded to the garden of the orphanage - where Frisk remembered was the cemetery - where they were holding a very plain and children-only funeral. And far-removed from what she claimed she was like in her home, Chara's image was crying. "He suffocated. A little bit of help would have been enough. But that was too much to ask. We would not want to upset our more 'various' newcomers, would we now?"

"The rest might be familiar." The next place they stopped at was in one of the dormitories. One of the particularly high-up ones. The room was empty, the other children were probably having dinner. Chara's image stood at the ledge of an open window and looked at the night sky. "There is no escape." And eventually, she jumped. Only for her - and the two of them - to find themselves in Chara's dormitory in the morning. "There is all the less of an escape, if something brings you back, every time you die. My determination is different from yours. Yours is your will to persevere. But mine keeps me from straying away from the only true goal. I am not done with this world, until this world is no more.

Next was no memory of Aberdeen orphanage. Instead, it was as if they were actually in their surroundings, which were a crude, wooden house. Through the door and the window, he could see that they were in a little town in a desert. They both now wore cowboy costumes. Chara sat on a chair next to an improperly built and uneven wooden chair and turned on a projector - unfitting to the time, but child cowboys didn't really fit anywhere either. "Take a seat. Let me show you one last thing." She got a set of slides that she used to show him various images with. "There are of course humans who have an idea of why all of this is happening. But they are as guilty as anyone else. Are they doing anything? No, they aren't. They are too busy blaming Elves for their inaction to do anything about it. Here you see the leader of the group that campaigned for the law that made that one particular day the way it was. Gloria Eichenwald. Janet Eichenwald's aunt." She pointed at the ears of a woman on a photo of her profile. "Pointy ears. She is indeed an Elf. But the women that helped her campaign for it." The next slide showed a whole bunch of unsightly women in their fourties holding up protest signs. In fact, she slowly went through one picture of them after the other. "Their ears are round, do they look like Elves to you?" The next image was a profile of the caretaker. "Mrs.. Foster, does she look like an Elf to you?" Indeed, her ears were round. The next image was impossible to be an actual photo, as it was from Chara's memory of her father getting arrested. "Those policemen, do they look like Elves to you? The men that voted for the bill Gloria campaigned for, were they all Elves? The people that voted for them, were they Elves? No. They were all humans. Humans forged their own fate, now the iron is cold and this fate can not be changed."

"Humans allowed for child molesters to have special protection rights. They allowed for laws to pass that pitted men and women against one another. They allowed for their fortunes and their occupations to be taken away without taking them back. They allowed for themselves to be displaced, without so much as expressing any discontent with being disenfranchised. They are too afraid of being called names to say no to anyone. They cave to any demand. Call a human a 'racist' or only threaten to do so, and they will tolerate agree to any atrocity that is committed upon them. Even letting their children be turned into a trophy to fight for, be taken away, be driven to suicide, even their complete extinction."

The earth began to shake. Upon turning to Chara, Frisk noticed that her face was 'melting' again. **_"Humans and Monsters are inseparable. Isolated from humans, Monsters are comparably weak and sickly and slowly lose their will to live. Isolated from Monsters, humans lack inspiration and slowly lose their will to live as well. One cannot be without the other in the long run._** **_The things you have seen - and worse - will be done to Monsters as well. All because humanity allowed for it's own erasure._** " The ground began to shake more and more. The panels that lined the ceiling and the wall, began to have cracks and soon gave in and he could hear the house being torn apart slowly. **_"Humanity has no-one to blame but themselves! To not secure a future for your children - to forsake your children like that is to agree to your erasure! Erasure is the fate they chose! ERASURE IS THE FATE THEY DESERVE! ERASURE IS THE FATE THAT THEY ALL DESERVE!"_**

The shaking somehow took hold of his head and it was unbearable. Frisk covered his ears and closed his eyes. It was too much. Too much to bear beyond shielding himself against it however he could as long as it lasted. Until it stopped. Everything came to a stop. When he opened his eyes, he was still on the chair, but the chair was 'standing' on the surface of that same ocean of blood in the dark that they were standing on at the beginning. "So here we are. There is no way out. Humanity will die out soon. And slowly and painfully, with endless, unnecessary hardship, so will Monsters. Everyone you - everyone we care about, will be driven apart, will lose everything and eventually either be killed by Orcs, take their own lives, or simply live to death with no opportunity to change anything about it. The world will become a wasteland, filled with nothing but poverty, war and misery. Every company, every public office, every organization is under Elfish control, and humans lack the spine to take any of it back. They can not be beaten. The fate of this world is set in stone. But I offer you a way out." She stretched out her hand and smiled. "This world is pointless. Take my hand. Let us erase it together."

Minutes passed. Minutes of nothing but the two staring at each other. Thinking about what to say, what to do. Eventually, Frisk had the words. "* No."

"No?" Her arm dropped. "In spite of everything? Don't you care enough for them that you wouldn't want to see them suffer like that?"

"* It's because I care that I'm not helping you. That day - your house - that was different. We were playing through a memory. But real life? If there is any hope. Any route we can take. Think of Mom, Dad, everyone. If there is the least bit of hope that we can make things end well for them, shouldn't we try?"

She stopped smiling. He had her. Regardless of what she was, deep down, she cared about them. "There is no hope."

"* I don't believe you. There has to be something. Anything we can do!"

"You are talking to someone who made great efforts in an attempt to erase the world. I had Mother killed, remember that."

He knew she would try to distance herself this way. He shook it off. "* You knew I wouldn't let that happen."

"The Orcs are multiplying and killing in too great numbers."

"* Then we'll spare them into helping us."

"You can't spare your way through everything. Mercy won't work with them. Mercy doesn't always work. Even after you SAVEd him, Asriel still told you so much."

A tough customer, he had to meet her half-way then. "* If you can erase the world, why not just erase the Orcs?"

"Even if I erased them all - and Elves - without a spine to fight back with, what is to stop the next race to take advantage of us?"

"* Then we'll find a way around that, too. Come on, Chara. Come with us! We can work out something - somehow." Now it was him that offered her his hand.

Chara took a deep breath and sighed. "In that case, I need to apologize."

"* Why?"

She shook her head. "Pardon the insincerity. But I was merely being polite. You never had a choice in this." He wasn't quite sure what she meant. But then she turned nightmarish again and pale hands shot out from beneath. _**"You were dead from the very beginning."**_ The hands grabbed him and held him in place, while she laughed and lumbered his way with a kitchen knife and stabbed him one more time.


	57. Blood and Corpses

.

Beyond SAVEing

Chapter 07

Stars and Rainbows

* * *

"An excellent question, Alphys. Let's bring it back to Boss Monsters for that. As a crutch to help understand where Boss Monsters' overt protectiveness and - from a human or similar standpoint - unusually strong emotional responses come from, we are going to use an ecological model. Let's skip the math for Papyrus' sake and focus on the abstract. All creatures that are life forms in the natural sense - as in skeletons are not included here - have reproductive strategies that range between two extremes. One is characterized with short life cycles, short gestation periods, high amount of offspring and low parental investment in one's offspring. Usually also associated with short-term thinking or general mental short-sightedness among creatures that can talk. For a few examples, we can put Orcs in that category, or rabbits, or all sorts of spiders, or Migosps. Generally creatures that don't think very far, may have a very erratic behaviour that gets them into life-threatening situations a lot of the time, and overall not really fit for building advanced civilizations. More importantly, long-lasting civilizations - remember, short-term thinking being the point here."

"Then on the other side, would be the high capacity approach. Common traits are long incubation times, strong immune systems, long lifecycles, long-term thinking and the point I'm trying to get to here - little offspring but strong parental investment in one's offspring. The more intelligent species, the species that think ahead, the species that put a lot of value into every life, are also the species that put a lot of effort into and a lot of emotional value onto their children. Examples for that side would be Tideriders, humans, Elves, Boss Monsters - and those two reproductive strategies aren't absolutes. They're just an abstraction - a model to describe tendencies. An Orc is still more capacity-oriented than a rabbit. They abuse their children and raise them essentially to kill each other for lack of resources following a period of overreproduction, but at least they raise their children, they still have that going for them."

"And likewise, a Boss Monster is a lot more capacity-oriented than a human, an Elf or a Tiderider. In fact, scratch that. You think humans can be emotional? Humans and similar species are nothing compared to a Boss Monster. At optimum conditions, a human has maybe a century's worth of a life expectancy. With Boss Monsters, we are talking about a being that can go for thousands of years without aging a day. Now take that into account when getting a rough estimate how extremely emotionally invested Boss Monsters are in their children. You better believe they're overprotective. You better believe that it breaks them if they lose their offspring. That is why pairbonding is so intrinsic to their physiology that they form an unbreakable connection with their mate. Pairponding is another trait shared among creatures with a capacity-oriented reproductive strategy."

"Do you understand now? Do you understand why they reacted that way? How she lost control and just burned everything down? And that period of complete non-function afterwards? Now it makes sense, at least I hope so."

* * *

Above a forest in the dark of the night, illuminated only by the lights of nearby towns and villages and through exertion of their own magic power, two colossi both in size and power, faced off to decide who's path the world should take. Erasure or an attempt at salvage. But the one that wanted the latter had just lost his trump card. Frisk was gone. He had jumped onto Chara.

"* Frisk? Frisk!" Asriel lost him. Chara's giant, winged and bloated body, now swarmed in a cloud of kitchen knives and surging away from him, could be the only place he was at. He did all this to try to SAVE her. Did he do it? Was she on the defensive? Asriel swung his wings, the stars more clearly visible within them than in the actual sky, to dash after her. But just like before, he couldn't gain on her. Until she stopped, and the sphere of rapidly moving knives spread out and vanished. "* No! Load! Load!" His heart sunk. When he managed to get him in sight at last, it was already too late. A bloodied spine had grown out of Chara's body - with a sharp blade of bone at it's tip, and had pierced right through the little human. "* No! Load! Why aren't we going back?" He charged after her, but soon gave up as any attempts at getting to her unless she allowed him to were in vain. "* No, no, no, no! Frisk! Come on!" It was as if the world had stopped, grasping what had happened.

Now with an increasing distance from him, the spine that pierced the lifeless child lifted itself up and shook him off to have the child's body drop onto a field of grass. How could this happen? **_"It would seem."_** Chara grinned at Asriel. There was no way she would let him get to Frisk now. _**"That you are out of miracles to work."**_ The god of hyperdeath - helpless and hopeless, stared at them. This was it. The end. Frisk's body was already beginning to glow in the red light of a human soul resonating with a Monster's body. Chara was going to absorb his soul, become too powerful for Asriel to fight back, take out everyone, take more souls and become powerful enough to end it all for good. But more than that, Frisk was dead. How? Why?

"* No!" He screamed one more time, his trembling voice roaring across the countryside for bystanders and people far away alike to hear. This couldn't be happening, and yet it was.

And slowly, but surely, shining brighter than all the souls he remembered seeing in the Underground, the red soul drifted out of it's body. _**"Yes! The end of all things is upon us!"**_ Chara dispelled her weapons and reached for it. In one last attempt to change it, Asriel rushed her way again, but she simply needed to stretch her hands his way, and unleash an overwhelming rainbow beam to catch him by surprise and push him further away again. He had lost. They had lost. The grinning monstrosity was reaching down to the rising soul. Her hand - still wrought with the pain of the twisting and writhing bodies that made it up, came closer and closer to the rising soul. _**"Yes."**_ Chara's hollow mouth widened further up as the moment they would come into contact came closer. Once Frisk's soul was high enough to do so, she swiped down. _**"Ha ha - wait."**_ She had swiped down onto it. Her hand was placed onto the grass below it, but the soul was still there. And it was still moving further upwards. _**"No."**_ She tried grabbing it again. And phased right through it. _**"Stop that."**_ Again. To no effect. _**"Frisk, stop that!"**_ The soul kept moving on it's own. And not towards her. She swiped at it again and again, trying to grab it, going so far as to float forward to completely engulf it. It simply drifted onwards as if she was a ghost. _**"No! I have come too far for this nonsense! Stop this at once!"**_ She tried blasting at it with a ray of pure magic power. It was unscathed by the end of it. She tried again and again to absorb it, but it refused.

With tears in his eyes, but with a loss for words at what was happening, Asriel stared down at the unstoppable red light as it rose higher and higher and moved. Away from Chara. But towards him. "* Asriel." What was happening? "* Asriel." Wait, that was Frisk's voice.

"* Frisk?" All the more confused, he kept staring at the soul that made it's way to him, completely unhindered by the more and more desperate creature that was trying to catch it. "* Is that you?"

"* Remember what Flowey said, Asriel. About what you do when you have new and great powers." The closer the soul came to him, the brighter it shone. "* We can bring her home. Together." Asriel took a deep breath, shook his head, wiped the tears aside and pulled himself together. It wasn't over after all. Somehow, Frisk pulled through. When Chara paid no more attention to him, completely consumed by trying to snatch the soul with her hideous hands, Asriel took her by surprise and launched a beam at her, taking her by surprise and forcing and burying her into the ground.

Any sobs were suppressed, and uncertainty cleared out of his throat, and Asriel soon acted on what Frisk was alluding to. Somewhere, over at that compound, people were still watching them. This was like in those TV shows, when the main characters were pushed to the brink and discovered some new power or evolved to a new, stronger form. If Frisk joined forces with him this way, there was no way they couldn't stop Chara. And with Frisk's soul being fully there, healing and restoring his body to bring him back to life would be easy. He adjusted himself to float straight, stretched out his arm to the side and roared: "* Delta Rune Asriel - add Frisk's soul to become!" Now a lot more resigned, Chara kept reaching for it, but never actually getting that soul. And soon enough, it came closer and drifted into the white orb at the centre of Asriel's Delta Rune from. He immediately felt it's power - greater than that of any soul he had come into contact with - surge through his body. He could see - hear - feel - not just everything. Everywhere. Always. It was as if he was in contact with all of space and time at once. A kind of omniscience that seven souls couldn't recreate.

Through sheer force of his will, without any attacks, Asriel pushed Chara away and rammed her straight into the ground. He enveloped himself in a giant, evergrowing sphere of bright white light. And only when he was done taking on a new form to fit the occasion, did the six wings that were wrapped around him spread themselves out, 'breaking' apart the sphere and presenting him to the world. He no longer consisted of closely adjacent components that merely floated together, but was a solid and connected titan. Still huge, still with a Boss Monster head, but clad in bright white glowing armour, which was lined all over with ornaments and engravings that glowed in the colours of all the souls he had. His dark runeblade was gone and had made way for a golden trident, and his oversized shield was replaced with a small, round buckler. The name of his form, formed out of giant steel letters while he teleported both himself and Chara back to the compound, appeared and lined the space below him. With newfound strength in his voice, a voice so strong, it's force launched a wind across the compound he screamed out it's name, audible to anyone even in nearby towns. "* Delta Rune Asriel - SERAPH MODE!"

Unsurprisingly, everyone else was shocked so much that Alphys and Undyne stumbled and fell over. Their jaws were never not in a dropped state. If anime hadn't been real before, it definitely was now. Even if only for a brief time.

Still with a disturbing and penetrating voice, Chara shook her head and stuttered. _ **"No, no, no! A-Asriel no! You cannot do this!"**_ In a desperate effort to turn this against all odds, she resummoned her knife, it began to glow in deep red and she started firing red 'slashes' Asriel's way. Now less on his own and rather guided by Frisk, he was unimpressed and deflected everyone of them with his trident. Dust and earth was launched up wherever the red projectiles struck the ground. He lowered himself to stand on the steel letters, which planted themselves on the ground.

Finally, with composure, Asriel spoke down to her. "* You will erase nothing tonight."

If Chara had knees, she would have been on them at this point. She reached out to him and begged: _ **"Asriel, please! This has to end! You know it must!"**_

Without a word, Asriel got off his 'stage', marched her way and picked the bibbering nightmare up. He swung around, launched her upwards, aimed his trident at her and jumped after her. He screamed: "* Heavenly Spear!" When the trident pierced Chara, he used this momentum to drag her higher and higher into the sky. The objects far in the distance moved apart to make way for him. The air blew against his floppy ears, the screaming monstrosity would not stop trying to pull them in another direction. But this was over. Asriel was too strong now. She couldn't get her way. He couldn't help but notice her raise her red knife and launch a few 'slashes' into the air, which made a curve and headed his way. With little idea where to move, he got caught in them. But somehow found himself back a few seconds earlier, when they were still on the ground. "* Heavenly Spear" He did the same thing again, grabbed and launched Chara into the air and pushed her into the sky with his trident. He had more souls than her, she couldn't overpower him, but through her ability to form this pure intent to kill, she still had ways of fighting back. It was only that now that they shared a body, strange things couldn't happen any more. Their determination would pull through, they could try again every time one of her red slashes hit them.

"* Asriel." He heard Frisk's voice in his head. "* Let me try." He felt control being taken from his movements, and he allowed it. While Asriel didn't let go of Chara, Frisk guided his movements to help him dodge Chara's attacks.

They had only joined together like this for such a short while, but shared control easily unlike anything when he and Chara shared a body. Once so far up, they were less on earth than in earth's orbit, he swung his trident multiple times across her, slashing through her every time. When done as far as that went, he grabbed the desperate monstrosity again, launched her further away, formed a temporary hammer that glowed with golden light around the tip of his trident and smashed Chara straight towards the moon. Within the vacuum of space, where nobody could hear it, he still shouted out a spontaneous name for his attack. "* Sacred Smite!" Even here, Chara tried to stop her own movement. Before she could get far with that, the prince launched an unending ray of light to press her closer and closer to the moon. For lack of anything else to do, she kept slashing, she kept launching red, deadly attacks his way. He felt Frisk take control of his maneuvers, and only his maneuvers as they charged after her. Within a moment's notice, the two of them were focusing on different things, allowing one body to concentrate both on dodging Chara's attacks and keeping her in a straight path towards the moon.

On their way there, Frisk's voice echoed through his mind. "* We have to talk about those names." Couldn't this wait? "* You're right." After continuously dodging and pushing Chara towards the moon, Asriel realized that just like on their trip up here flying through space took a lot longer than he expected.

With more strength in his attack, he accelerated the two of them. Focused his fire with full strength so that the two could move faster and faster, until Chara - causing a cloud of dust to erupt - clashed into the moon with her back, so strongly, part of one of her bloodied 'wings' broke off and dissolved to scatter itself into the rest of the dust that covered the moon. The cloud that erupted from the impact was so large, you could see it all the way down to the surface. At least if you looked closely and didn't need glasses. Before Chara had too much time to get up though, Asriel sped right to the heart of it, grabbed her by the neck with one hand and buried the other into her stomach. He formed a bubble of air around the two of them and shouted: "* Eternal Purge!" From his hands shot flames burning in multiple colours and began burning up the monstrosity they gripped from inside. Up close like this, he could keep her movements restrained just through his will. This was how powerful eight human souls made you. They didn't increase your power, they magnified it. At unnatural, switching speeds, Chara moved about, writhed from the pain of his attack. She couldn't escape any more. So much was clear.

He burned and burned and burned her this way. He held her in place and tried to look her in the eyes. "* I WILL bring you back to your senses! No matter what I need to do, no matter where we need to go. You wanted the end of the world? Let's go to the end of the world!" He ripped off her sombrero, grabbed Chara by the her collar and dragged her away. He used his power to remove the two of them as far as he could from here. Further and further. He didn't bother to think about it, he just kept going. Keeping her in his grip and teleporting the two of them at such a pace, they were more in a continuous tunnel headed off into oblivion, rather than zapping about in jumps the regular way. Eventually, they arrived at the end of anything he could conceive. At a corner of where any space or time as they knew it only barely existed. The literal end of the universe. Where regular conventions of what forms they had chosen didn't matter. They were only two little children, both in tears, in a held-together bubble of air, one punching the other with one hand while holding her with the other.

He trembled while he did it. He had little control over himself, and probably shouldn't have been so violent, but only Frisk had the composure to think that far in that moment. "* You did this to me, Chara! You and your stupid plan!" He struck her face so much if they had actual human bodies, he would have broken her nose. "* I could be alive! You could be alive! Mom and Dad could be happy and together!"

In spite of everything, Chara seemed unimpressed. She simply took this beating without batting an eye. "Stop wasting both of our time. You won, Asriel. Now go ahead and kill me, banish me, do whatever you think can save this world."

Asriel grabbed her with both hands again and shook her. "* No, you don't understand! I finally found you! You are not leaving again! We can bring you home! We've both got a lot we can do! We can give you a body! You can come home and live with us again!"

Chara smiled. "Home? This is adorable. You think what I have done is in any way forgivable? Do you tell yourself the same thing about yourself?"

"* You didn't do anything! We can undo it all! We did undo it all!"

Now she chuckled. "You didn't undo the dragon's death. And with what your determination did, you may not be able to any more. You sound like those morons in that other world. The world just like ours. They put so much effort into crafting all kinds of theories in attempts to absolve me of any guilt. Theories of how I always had the best intentions, about how I simply didn't know any better. Some even involve me being possessed by a demon that drives me to what I do. In fact, a few from that world might be right here with us. Hearing or reading every word. To them, I have something to say. I am not possessed by a demon. I did everything on my own accord - on some level deep down, maliciously. Even if they stop me here, so long as this world remains drifting towards the savage wasteland it is becoming, I will find ways to erase it. And then move on to the next. Your world is just like this one. It has it's own humans, it's own Elves and it's own Orcs. And it is so much more desolate with no Monsters to fill the void. **_Once I move on to another world to erase, just who's world do you think is next?"_**

"* Snap out of it, Chara!" He punched her again. "* Talk to me! Stop keeping secrets! Why did you never - talk to me, Chara! This is your problem! We cared about you! We still care about you! Don't swallow your troubles! Talk to us! Tell us about what bothers you!"

"All right. This world cannot be saved. The tides have turned one way too strongly. Regardless of what you do hereafter, everyone you care about will see their lives run against a wall, followed by their soon deaths. No-one is to be spared. First they will come for humans, then Monsters, then Dwarves, then everyone else. Endless misery is impending."

"* Then help us stop it! Let's at least try to save the world! Together!"

Finally, she smiled at him. Less with mockery, more with contentment. "This is why I never tell you anything. You are so innocent. Even after all you did as a flower, you are so untouched by the cruelty of this world. Even knowing what we can see now, you still think the world is not beyond all hope. I could not bear to see you as disillusioned as you will be if the world continues."

"* Yes! Chara, you're getting it! If we can become all-powerful beings at the end of the world, we can do anything together!"

She was much more resigned by then. She had come to accept that she had failed. She had a more tired-out expression. "No, not together. Seal me away, erase me, do whatever you need to. But if you really want to continue this world, do so without me. What little of a heart I have left would be broken seeing what is coming."

"* No! You're coming with us! I won't lose you again! Chara? Chara?" He only blinked once, but when he did, he next saw nothing. Well, he did see her with the source of light he generated, but she didn't have a face. It was gone. "* Chara! Don't do this! Come on, stay with me!"

"If you give me any opportunity, I will erase this world."

The Boss Monster shook his head. "* Don't say that! We can live together now!"

Suddenly, as if carved by an invisible hand, three wounds cut themselves into the empty space on her head where once her face was. Two vertical ones where her eyes should have been, one horizontal one that opened up into a curve to form a smiling - bleeding mouth. Once open, with a stream of blood flowing from all three, she began 'talking' using those wounds as a face. _ **"I am the evil they all feel and fear, but no-one dares to speak of. The demon that comes when people call her name. My will is everlasting and my determination will never falter, until the last living being breathes it's last dying breath."**_ For the first time, she grabbed Asriel's arms and the bleeding wounds on her face stared him right in the eyes. _**"I will end all life as you know it, and I will make you watch!"**_

It was hopeless. Whatever he said wouldn't persuade her. He had to find some other way. He dragged her back. All the way back. He warped the two of them through a long tunnel, adjusted it to bring the two of them back to earth, back to the compound where all the others still stood, unsure about what was going on. Once he was further back, no longer at the edge of where their concepts of how the world worked ended, they were back to being giants, one a Boss Monster in white, glowing armour, the other a creature assembled from the excesses of the mind of a serial killer. He grabbed her with both hands and pressed her onto the field just outside where they were. "* Sans!" His knowledge of his surroundings gave him an idea. It wasn't much of an idea, but it was a start. Within a moment's notice, he arrived. He kept her in place and incapacitated, with all the power he could muster. "* I can restrict her power! Do what you tried to do!" While he did this, he used what he had left to form something. He could feel everything down to it's smallest components and had an understanding of it that would otherwise not be possible. Out of particles lifted from the earth around them, he formed something new. A body. The body of a little girl, wearing a green striped sweater. An exact replica of Chara's human body from before everything. Before her plan, before she poisoned herself, before she died.

Asriel knew, from seeing through time itself, that Sans had tried to use one specific spell, a magic attack he learned for emergencies, before the rest of them arrived. The spell that forced a Monster to regurgitate any human soul it contained. While he came closer, the prince formed replica of the other humans' bodies. No human that still had a soul would leave this place dead. It took Sans a moment to realize what he was referring to, but soon enough, he stood on Chara's restrained body with black clouds swirling around his right hand. When he placed it on her neck, he lost balance from how much Chara's body erupted. She choked and coughed up a thick, black substance before finally the first soul, the deep blue one Asriel and Frisk had briefly been in contact with, left the black hollow of her mouth. Without touching it, he guided it into it's respective body. "* Chara! I know you think things can't change! But they can! We've proven it can so often!" She coughed up another one and screamed in agony. He ignored that. He knew full well that she could hear him. It was impossible not to hear him. Asriel's mouth trembled. He was as worked up as he was when they were at the end of the world. "* Even if it was true! Even if what you say is the fate of the world, I won't accept that fate! I simply refuse!" Two more souls left her and were guided back into their respective bodies. "* We can refuse fate, Chara! We can change it!" She grabbed her neck in a struggle for air, but ended up twisting around and spitting out three more souls. "* This world is not beyond saving!" And finally, her body shrank down, only to fall apart and dissolve into dust, leaving behind one last, brightly shining red soul. Once it was placed into it's respective body, Asriel directed a surge of power into it to wake her up. He lifted her up into the air and opened a portal next to her. "* And neither are you!", he screamed, launching her through the portal and closing it.

Where he sent her to, I'm not sure. I'm not even sure 'when' he sent her. The kind of awareness you have when you have the power of so many human souls, gives you a certain level of omniscience. Not complete omniscience, but you're aware of your surroundings. You're aware of everything in the present, you're aware of everything in the past, in the future, the more souls you have, the further the scope of what you can sense. And the problem with being all-knowing at one point and no longer all-knowing in the next, is that you don't remember everything you thought or knew. I only know one thing. We are going to see each other again. She isn't gone forever and she isn't lost forever.

Within a flash of light, Asriel took on his regular form again. He kneeled down for a moment, to think about how to go about what came next. By then, all the others had followed him here. "THE FORCES OF GOOD ARE VICTORIOUS YET ANOTHER DAY!"

"* so you were asriel the whole time." Sans gave him a wink. "* shoulda worked that one out a lot sooner."

Undyne was absolutely excited. "* As...how? Nevermind that, that was awesome! You were like 'Serafu Moodo' and she was like 'Masaka'!"

Alphys was cowering behind Undyne's legs. "* P-p-please f-forgive me..."

Once he had made up his mind, he got up and smiled at them. "* Thank you. I'm sorry for anything that happened between us recently. I know I can be a bit troublesome as a flower. And thank you for defending him when she summoned those things."

Papyrus gave him a thumbs up. "NO ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE IN THE WORLD CAN GET PAST US!"

He faced Alphys. "* Alphys!" She was still terrified, and shrugged together when spoken to. "* It's okay. Come closer." She didn't say a word, but came out of hiding and slowly stepped towards him, her head hanging down the entire time. "* I forgive you. For everything. I know you only wanted to help. You didn't mean for any of this. For the flower, for this." Asriel nodded towards the pieces of rubble that were once that hastily built facility. He turned around to get some distance from them.

"* hey, wait up! where's the kid?"

Asriel simply turned around once he was at a safe distance and smiled. "* When you wake up, he will be completely fine." But his smile faded after that.

"* Wait, Asriel!" He heard Frisk's voice call out in his head, when he summoned Frisk's phone into his hand. The prince stood there for a while, contemplating something. "* You don't have to do that." Asriel was thinking about doing something. Frisk had always bugged Flowey about that. Almost immediately upon seeing him for the first time on the surface. He really didn't want to do this. "* You don't have to."

He was near tears again. He tried to smile, but whatever his mouth made, it wasn't really a smile. "* Yes. I have to. Chara showed me that." Mom and Dad were not happy. Frisk always asked me how to bring them back together. And I kept telling him not to. I was in the way. Chara stood in the way of that because of issues she didn't want to burden them with. Her attempt at being selfless left them broken and separated. Asriel's eyes began to well up with tears. "* They're not happy like this. You can't keep holding people back from reaching happiness, just because you want to shelter them from the sad things in life. That's what is really selfish." He wiped his tears aside, and as he began to rise up from the ground, he began holding the phone with only his will and with it's camera pointed at himself. "* They have to move on, Frisk. I want them to." Sparks of light formed and swirled around him. Pockets of pure concentrated power he was emitting. He couldn't keep himself from crying. But this had to be done. High up in the sky, with the stars in the background, he stretched out his hands and made the phone record a video of himself.

He trembled all over. The more real this became, the harder it became for him to do. But he had to do it. Still with tears running down his eyes, he began to speak to the camera. "* Mom, Dad. Howdy. It's me." He sobbed, but he pulled himself together after a moment. "* Yes, it's really me! I know it must be confusing to see me like this. And I can't explain to you how you can. But it's me. Asriel. Your Asriel. I need to tell you something. Don't ask me where I am. But from where I am, I can see you. I can see the lives you made yourselves up here. I can see your houses, I can see you live apart. I can see what you're like each in your homes. I can see how hard you work to keep yourselves busy and distracted. I can see how hard you try every day to convince yourselves that you're happy, when everyone around you can tell you're not. You live in identical homes, you even keep a room reserved for each other. You raise Frisk together while staying away from each other on your own time. You run a school together, when you do nothing but those things together."

"* And It's okay. I understand why. You can't face each other, because it means facing that you're both still hurting over what happened. You lost me and Chara long ago, and facing each other reminds you of it. It brings back the pain immediately. You might think up one reason or another for staying apart like this because it means not having to process how much it hurt you when it happened. Deep down, you know that opening up to each other and letting these feelings show, would leave you better off in the end. Deep down, you think if you never get over me, that this is some way of keeping me in mind." He struggled to keep it together. "* Don't. It doesn't. Being apart like this, you're not happy. None among the two of you are. But if you can't try to work it out and turn to each other again, if you can't do that for your own sakes, then please, do it for me! I want you to! I can't stand to see you like this. I want you to get over me! Nothing hurts me more than to see you with repressed sorrows the way you walk through every day right now. Nothing hurts me more than to see you being miserable like that. I just want you to have happy lives. Please! For my sake, for Frisk's sake and for your own, look into yourselves and give each other a try. Because I can't bear seeing you like this any more." His face was a mess and powers or not, he didn't do anything about it. "* I beg you! What's done is done! Whenever you think about what I would want or think, remind yourselves of one thing. All I would ever want, is for you to be happy. Nothing else. Always know that. Never forget it." His face hurt from being as tense as it was. "* I love you so much, both of you. Never forget that."

Finally he stopped the recording. He put his hands back together to wipe his face. "* It's done. Frisk, don't delete it. It will be the best for them." He took a few moments to breathe deeply. "* And now, to finish this." After bracing himself, he stretched his arms out again, closed his eyes and focused. There were a lot of things he needed to do. A lot of things he needed to fix. A lot of things he needed to change simultaneously. Just like Chara before, in spite of none of them using it that way, he had the power to change and rewrite anything. He had to make it so that what happened here didn't lead to some big chaos. He first made sure that every human that was killed, had a new body to return to. He erased their old, destroyed and broken bodies. Except Jaclyn's. He now knew about the things Jaclyn used to do, even before Chara found her way to her. Jaclyn was later found in a red light district, stabbed to death and with an organ surgically removed. She was believed to be one last, comparably crude victim of Jack the Ripper or Revenant Jack, when actually, she was Jack himself up until when Chara got to her. Any human that might have made that connection was just too afraid of coming off as conspiratorial to suggest it. He restored the Oldenburg facility and the other plants, but erased the machine they were built to power, as well as any blueprints of it Alphys had ever made.

As for the humans Jaclyn - or Chara - had abducted to use for souls, as well as the guards she tried to add, he erased their memories of what had happened, and created new ones in their minds and the minds of anyone in their lives to make it appear as if none of this had happened to them. As for the Monsters that witnessed it, the skeletons, Alphys, Undyne, he let them keep the memory of it. He consciously decided for all of them except Papyrus keep it after what he did next. He simply knew them well enough that he could trust them not to talk about what had happened when it was all done. As for what he did next, there was one thing that took him by surprise. Remember how I told you that when you're as powerful as he was at that point, that you can see everything and - in a way - you can see 'always'? He could. He could feel everything. The present, the past, the future, Enkate City, Atelia, the Kadmoan continent, earth, the solar system, the milkyway, when he took the time to focus, he could feel all of space and time. And something was off, in all of space and time. He felt like something was there. Something that shouldn't be everywhere in a way that it yet was. Someone or something was calling out to him. Reaching out to him. Not just here, but from everywhere. And not just now, in the past, in the future, it was everywhere his senses could reach. In a way that he couldn't explain, something was calling for help from every point in all of space and time at the same time. A message slammed onto all messages. Every sentence - whether written or said - had it. Every moment in the universe had it. Someone was calling for help and only he could perceive it. He latched onto that feeling. He grabbed it. He took hold of it. He made sure that he didn't let go. He stretched out the tendrils of his power onto every single point and every single moment in the universe. And then he pulled. He pulled whoever or whatever was out there as strongly as he could. Someone was calling to be taken home and who but him would make it possible? He focused more and more on this omnipresent sensation until finally, he made it. He brought it back. And around him, he felt everything change. Not just his surroundings, everything, the entire universe was rewriting itself. Courses of history both on earth and elsewhere were shifting and realigning themselves. He had to hold on to the souls with all he had, just to keep them so he could finish what he started. But in the end, he pulled through. He weathered the storm. He brought everyone that died back, but himself. He himself vanished.

As usual, I am all that is left

* * *

Unsure of what was going to happen, Frisk sat uncomfortably twisted, to look at the two grown Boss Monsters as they watched the rest of Asriel's message to them. "I love you so much, both of you. Never forget that.", their son concluded just before the video ended. Asgore gazed upon the phone. Aghast. Motionlessly. Not quite motionlessly. He was trembling. They both were. It was as if he had seen a ghost. Frisk didn't plan for this. He was hoping he could keep the video for when there was a more opportune time. A time when they'd be ready for something they might not understand immediately. But for whatever reason, that plan was shut down before it got anywhere. Mom was going through his phone when he slept and found it.

Slowly, Dad turned around to face the little human. "Child, how did you even...how could you?" Even his voice trembled after having seen this. And the strength it had accrued over their time up here, was gone. He marched right up to the child, grabbed him by the shoulders. "This has to be some kind of twisted joke! Humans have so many tricks to forge anything! I have seen these movies!" It was really getting to him. Within seconds, he wasn't crying, but the tears betrayed how he felt. "Just tell me one thing. How? I can understand finding any young Monster, but the one here - that was him! You must have found - something! You couldn't recreate him just like that!" Frisk wasn't sure whether Dad was aware of it, but the strength of his grip was really hurting him and getting shaken the way he was was dizzying. "Please! If you know anything about him that I don't...just tell me! Did you find something I never saw? Memorabilia that gave you the knowledge you needed for this? Footage or anything to make this possible?" It was really hurting a lot, but he was staring a grown, crying man in the eyes and wouldn't have dared to interject. "I'm not angry, all right? I won't be angry! I just want to know!" Before the child really had time to register Dad's transition from carefully angry to - whatever this was, the pain from being held in a tight grip subsided. And was replaced with pain from getting hugged more strongly than was comfortable for a human child. "If there is anything. A memento, a message - something from him you have, please show it to us!"

Mom grabbed him and pulled him back, which made him loosen up on Frisk. "Look at yourself, Asgore!" She wasn't any less shaken up, but she was still angry. "You shouldn't be begging him! This is unacceptable! Prove your worth as a father! What ever got into our child's head, it is uncalled for. Unforgivable." Words and a tone that hurt him deeply. But he had to take it. When Asriel recorded this message, he had a grasp of the world that Frisk couldn't comprehend. He had to suffer through this and trust in Asriel.

"Oh golly, talk about 'unforgivable'." Another voice spoke from within the kitchen. My voice. At once, the Dreemurrs were silent and as if not surprised enough before, all the more to see a familiar talking flower show up out of nowhere and pop up from the living room floor of Asgore's house. "You two - royal geniuses - obsess over inane details like he got this thing made, and you two talk about unforgivable?" The mocking tone, the shrieking voice, I didn't change the least about how I talked to them. "Look at yourselves. Whether he made that or someone else, they poured their heart into it and all you can think about is how it was made."

Alarmed about my intrusion, Asgore summoned his trident and practically pointed it down at me. "How did you get in here? Who or what are you?"

I grinned. "The same way I get anywhere." I retreated back into the floor and popped up in a vase further away. "And about that video, you didn't stop for a second to think about what was actually said. God, you're pathetic. Even if he did make this. How off-mark was he really? If he actually was watching the two of you, what would your child think? What would little boy Asriel really think?" To make sure I had time to talk to them, I retreated into a different pot a little further away just next to the corner that led into the hallway. They both had a lot of those pots, and those at Asgore's were actually less comfortable, because the blossoming flowers took up more space than the wilted ones Toriel had in their place. "The king of Monsters, the pillar of his kind. Your child risked everything, just to pursue your dream of Monsters living with humans again. And after it was over, after he had shown he would risk everything, by losing everything, what was the first major decision you made?" To match it, I twisted my face to make it look as scary as I could manage. "You declared war. You spat on everything he worked for. That is what you thought about him. No wonder Toriel left you!" Asgore's steps towards me were menacing enough that I didn't have to think twice about immediately retreating and emerging from a pot on the opposite side of the room. "But I've got to give you one thing. You sure are self-aware. Oh the guilt, the guilt, you never stop wallowing in that heavy, heavy guilt."

I tilted my head the other Boss Monster's way, while reverting to my usual, taunting grin. They gave up on chasing me, but they wouldn't stop being braced for combat at all times. Actually, they were so alarmed, they were slowly moving in position to always stand between me and Frisk. Little did they know I had no intention to hurt him. This wasn't about him, it was about them. "You're much different from that. Aren'tcha?" And oh golly, the look in her eyes could kill anyone when it was her turn. "As soon as you had an occasion - or let's call it what it is - an excuse, you left. You abandoned him, you abandoned Asriel's remains, just left it all and wandered out as if you weren't involved in any of this!" Just for effect, without needing to, I popped out of a different pot. "You never believed in anything you couldn't understand, or didn't know about, did you? You never even stayed for a second, in hope that something - who knows - anything would happen." I had to grow two vines to appear to shrug for that one. "Say - just hypothetically - if by some miracle, sweet little Asriel had come back. If something had made him rise from the dead. If he had found himself walking among us, maybe hanging around with his Dad for a bit, you know, maybe missing you, maybe visiting you, seeing what you're up to in that house in the ruins." Even though only through very subtle cues, I could see how her already cold gaze turned more and more sinister. "Say he visited you and your little house. Help me here, what would have sprung into his field of view - say he visited his old room. Maybe to reminisce the good old days with Chara."

My grin turned wider and wider. "What would he have found, I wonder?" They were long at a loss for words, but all the more now. I warped my face into something twisted that remotely resembled little boy Asriel's face. "The shoes of children." I could see the light of a flame flare up in Toriel's fluffy hands. She was like clay in my hands. I knew her in and out like a book after reading it a thousand times. "The shoes of children that weren't him." Again, it flared up. She wasn't consciously readying magic attacks. This was happening involuntarily. I was really getting through her thick skull. "The shoes of children you replaced him with." And again. "That's right. Poor old Toriel just loved this wholesome and fulfilling feeling of caring for someone. You just loved being like a mother to someone. That's all there was, wasn't it? That's why you were so quick to replace him. You cared. You cared about caring for someone because it made you feel needed. But not Asriel!" It flared up and got hot enough for her to notice. She shook her hand to keep the flame from forming. "You never really cared about Asriel." Finally! I had to duck and pulled back. Whether she wanted to or not, she launched a fireball straight my way. It struck the pot and slowly lit the plant on fire. From another pot, I followed this one up. "You never really cared about him!" She launched another one my way, a lot bigger. The first one only left behind a spark on the plant, this time it was on fire immediately. "And you never really loved him!"

She was trembling, tears welled up in her eyes. She bibbered and whimpered, firing attack after attack at me while I began to laugh at her with a shrill and mocking tone. "Stop! Toriel, stop!" Asgore tried to swipe down her hands, but he didn't bother restraining her. She kept acting on her impulses. Neither on her face, nor in her hands was there any shred of self-control. She kept launching attack after attack at the little flower that taunted her, popping up from one place after the other, each time an attack came my way. One place at a time, the whole room was catching fire. "Toriel!" With a tremble in it, almost as strong as with her, the king shouted with his now very powerful voice. "Look at what you're doing!" As he became more and more willing to restrain her, she turned weaker and weaker, until she lost the resolve to keep firing at me and began crying loudly, letting him pull her into an embrace. I retreated into hiding, but remained inside, to keep an eye on Frisk. Couldn't let the emotional breakdown of two stunted Boss Monsters leave him burnt, could I? The fires spread and connected with each other, only to spread all the more. It got really hot, really fast. As the entire place began burning down, they were still hugging, soon enough the waterworks ran on both sides. And I don't mean the fire brigade, they were crying loudly. Wheeze-ridden apologies were exchanged while everything around them burned to the ground.

"I'm so sorry! I just..."

"It's all right, Tori! We need to leave!" As soon as they caught themselves, they forcibly pulled Frisk closer, picked him up and carried him outside together, but as soon as he was in safety, they took a step away and couldn't keep apart from each other. Truly a sight for sore eyes. A child wringing his phone from his guardians, who had lost all resolve and were lost in giving each other comfort in their collective emotional breakdown, weeping openly and shamelessly on the streets. The human was the one that had to make the emergency call, and watch as they caught the attention of more and gawking neighbours. A few Monsters from a nearby house were fortunate enough to have a little garden and to have a hose installed in it, which they used to try to help contain the fire until the firefighters came. Before long, the whole house was burning down completely, and the entire area around them was all the more crowded, with half the village watching, police being on the scene for routine reasons, and some human neighbours coming by to give the three of them blankets to warm them up while they gave them a ride over to Toriel's.

When they arrived, when they got off the little bus, when they opened the front door, locked it once Frisk was inside, they left for the one room that was always locked in Toriel's house. Asgore's room, and not once on the entire way and afterwards, did they ever leave each other's arms. Or stop sobbing for that matter. You could really see - no, hear - where Asriel had it from, when Chara called him a crybaby. You could hear it even all the way to Frisk's room. They would cry and cry and cry and cry. For hours. Actually, not for hours. That was what Frisk was hoping. They were crying for days and only ever stopped for brief breaks to doze off for a bit, and fire those waterworks back up when they woke up. They only ever left Asgore's bedroom to fetch something to drink. And only together at that. Frisk proved pretty reliable. He found ways to contact Mrs.. Tuffet, to call in at the school on his Mom's behalf, to tell them about what had happened. The tall spider lady agreed to keep the school closed for until the Dreemurrs recovered. When he began to realize that this misery was going to continue for even longer than he thought, he began to go out of his way to first use his pocket money to fetch groceries for the three of them, then, they'd occasionally pick up on that and leave some money on the table so he could continue to do that. Because of how small he was, he had to go several times every day.

You need to understand. They had to work through fifteen years of denial. Fifteen years of never really coping with Asriel's loss. Fifteen years of bottled up grief. And now that it came out all at once, it consumed everything in their days. Usually, Toriel would barely let Frisk move more than fifty metres away from her at any given time unless he was either coming home from school, or in Asgore's care. You could forget grocery shopping. Now that working out Asriel's loss and really facing it together with Asgore was on the table, that took a back seat. Of course I knew that what I said wasn't true. Of course she really loved Asriel. But I knew I couldn't get that kind of reaction, I couldn't remove this seal of denial she had stuck in her mind, unless I claimed otherwise. Only way later, after talking with Frisk, did I understand something. For humans, this wasn't normal. Which is why for Frisk...he was understanding. He did what he could to be there for them. But it was really confusing for him, too. At first, he thought they'd calm down after an hour or so. A few hours later, he understood he had to give them a day. After a few days, he got worried. I watched everything from hiding. Eventually, he did get up with the intention to barge in and try to talk them out of crying. When he did, I popped up, gave him a very stern look, and shook my head before disappearing again. He had to give them time. This period of the Asgore and Toriel - day and night - nonstop - crying every waking minute, it wouldn't stop.

By the time ten days had passed, they were still going. He started to become desperate. It was the same desperation I had. The same desperation that was the reason why all this hadn't happened before now. I knew the exact route. I knew which flags to raise, which strings to pull, to get Asgore and Toriel to open up to each other. But this, this state they were in, it just wouldn't stop. I gave up before they calmed down and RESET back to when I was created. The timeline where I brought them together was scrapped. All I did this time - with Asriel's help I've got to admit - was to repeat almost the exact same script, with minor changes. But I couldn't just RESET back any more, could I? That power was Frisk's now.

At day ten of the two of them still going, the human in the house wasn't doing much, but this was still exhausting to him. Eventually, at a point I could tell wasn't his usual time to go shopping, he put on some of the unseemly but very warm clothes Toriel had bought for him, left, locked the door as usual, but instead of going anywhere, went around the corner onto what little of an outdoors garden there was between Toriel's house and the fence at the end of her property. When he was sure he was all alone, comfortably seated against the outside wall, he sat down onto the snow and sighed. This weighed down on him more than he would have liked to admit. He pulled up the collar of his thick winter jacket to keep his face warm, but buried it in his arms.

He was alone. Alone with some peace and calm. I hadn't spoken a word to him all the way to this point. I was being silent, hoping that he couldn't bear to have them this way for too long and would end it with his power. He didn't. I tried to put on a pouty face. And failed. So I stuck to standing at an angle where he couldn't see my face. "There. Are you happy with yourself?" I got his attention, but he only stared at me. My stalk seesawed about with an unease I couldn't recall having before. Not as a flower. "You got your wish. They're back together." I figured I couldn't hide my face altogether, so I faced him after all. What exact look I had on my face, I didn't know. I only knew I didn't feel well, showing it to him. I was frowning. But not on my own accord. "I really hope for you that it's worth it." I kept telling him to be careful what to wish for. But he wouldn't listen. And for whatever reason that I can't remember, Asriel thought this was a good idea, too.

While still staying at the outside wall, the little human shuffled closer to me. "You said some...Those things you said. Did you - Asriel." He was trembling as was, but in spite of that, several vines shot out of the ground and headed his way. Their thorns hurt, but I made sure that I didn't injure him. I only pressed him back against the wall.

"Don't." I was trembling. All of me. I had little self-control. "Don't. Call. Me. Asriel." I was furious, at least I thought so. That wasn't it though. "I am not Asriel." Despite everything, even my fake eyes began to fill with tears. "I am not. Don't you dare call me that." To a degree, I was aware of it myself. I had to take a short breath before I could continue. "Asriel would never do this. He would never hurt their feelings like that. He could never make them so miserable..." This was the point when I was becoming aware of what was happening. I started sobbing. "I didn't want this, you know. No-one would want this. Why won't they stop, Frisk!" The grip of my vines tightened and pressed him on the wall. I hurt him, and I didn't care. To an extent, neither did he. Most of my voice was lost in the whimpers I couldn't stop. "I'm not asking to be Asriel again. I'm not hoping to get his life back. I only want them to move on! Why! Why is this too much to ask?"

His right arm wasn't pinned to the wall, and he carefully moved it my way. "I just wa...why?"

My frown turned more into a grimace and I tightened the grip my vines held on him. "Why what?"

"Why do..." He struggled to find the right words, because with every approach he took, I had a look on my face that told him I wouldn't like what he was about to say. "Why does this affect...why do you care?" His hand eventually got past my petals and picked up one of my tears. "This...you can't love them, right? Why do you care so much? You shouldn't..."

Before he could say much more, I pressed him against the wall more strongly and bent further his way. "Because I do!" I began to shake him. I did my best to keep my voice down, but it was a broken screech anyway. "I love them you stupid, stupid kid and I can't take this any more! I want it to stop, please, make it stop!" People tend to think the worst thing to happen to someone is to be lost and forgotten. But there is something worse. Being lost and not forgotten is worse. Having to wander the world, seeing everyone you care about mourn your loss and suffer because of it. And all this, over and over, for eternity. Not having a soul helps, but it doesn't make everything perfect. But this was worse than 'not everything being perfect'. This was more. "I made a mistake! This is worse than before! I learned my lesson, okay? Please, just turn back, make it stop!"

I must have been a terrifying and yet pathetic thing to look at. He let go of me and remained right where I was keeping him. We stared at each other in silence. He swallowed that slimy, uncomfortable feeling he had from not knowing what to say next. By the time anyone opened their mouths, the urgency from my pleas for it to stop was gone. "You said you love them."

I wasn't thinking straight. I only took this as a cue to turn all the more hysterical. "Yes! I admit it! I love them! Again! I don't know why, I don't know how, but I do, and I can't do this any more! I gave up last time I did this and I'm throwing in the towel! What do I need to do for you to LOAD? Whatever it is, say it! You want me to come clean? Is that it? You want me to get in front of them and tell them the same son they're mourning is still around, but doomed to be a soulless husk for..." I stopped, because Frisk raised his hand. And from the stern look, I could tell he finally had something to say.

"What if you're not soulless?" That was all it needed, for any tremors on both sides to stop. "You said you love them." I was dumbfounded enough to slowly unwind those vines, let him go and retreat back to the patch a bit further off where I had sprouted. Still drenched in tears, but now quiet, I stared past him. He was right. I only sort of blurted it out accidentally, but it was true. I felt love for them again. Just like Asriel when he recorded that message, their well-being was the only thing I cared about. I calmed down. My breaths - more an expression of what I felt like than an actual necessity, grew more even. He was right. For a while I stared at the squashed snow in the garden, on the path from the front, to where the boy was sitting. I raised a vine to wipe the last few tears off my face. I was still confused by it and kept thinking about it. The words repeated themselves in my mind again and again. He was right. Why did I care? I never felt something that made it worth caring. At least I hadn't in a long, long, very long time. "Flowey..." The child reached out for a moment, then realized that pulling me in for a hug was a bad idea given my...well, My form. But once a bit closer, he looked for the right words. "Flowey...Chara. She said...she said her soul regrew, right?" My eyes widened. "What if..."

What if the same could happen with me? What with, although only a little, it already had happened? She was only concluding from hers being whole when she showed it to everyone. From there, the two of us calmed down more and more, and began thinking, and openly speculating. If my whole soul was just back, I would be able to feel that. Even as a flower, I would be much more powerful. But some of it must be back. You don't feel for those close to you the way I do now, unless you have a soul. In that brief time, after I had stopped Chara from adding twelve human souls to the two she already had, all the way to when I did my best to fix what she had done. What if in that time, seven human souls were enough for my soul to regrow, even just a little bit?

And after we separated, I began thinking about it more and later shared my thoughts with him. When I was the one he was SAVEing, not Chara, what if in that short time of sharing the company of six human souls and those of all Monsters, without undoing it through a RESET, what if that helped me care already? So much about things that happened in the past made sense to me after that. Why did I feel like I missed Frisk and all the Monsters he befriended, after they left the Underground? Why did I care enough to stay away from all of them, thinking that would be best for them? Why did I care enough to ask Toriel if she was really, truly happy? Why did I want to know that? It shouldn't matter to me, should it? But it did.

* * *

In a hospital, on New Year's Day, in a smog-ridden industrial sector of the city, an old man lay in his death bed. With a heart rate monitor and more means of keeping track of his physical state attached to him, defibrillators and various other pieces of emergency equipment in place, hooked up and ready in case an inevitable heart attack happened. And yet, in spite of everything being at it's end for him, in spite of his dear ones' visitations already being over, in spite of being all alone, and ready to pass on, he was well awake and intently listening. He was listening to a golden flower, a flower with a face, peeking out from a pot with a plastic plant flimsily lodged inside it, who had spending a lot of time - hours upon hours upon hours - every waking minute that he had without the hospital staff being in the room, he popped up to continue telling this old man the long story of how Monsters were trapped Underground, how a little human fell through a hole and wound up wandering through it in his search for an ending. He told the story of the boy searching not just an exit - not just a way for himself to leave the Underground, but for a way to lead them all outside. He had the power to go back and redo any series of events, in hopes of finding the best outcome. The best ending, that was all he wanted.

And even when he was done, the flower went on to tell more stories. Stories that followed the lives of the same Monsters the human child had led to freedom. He told the story of a broken king, who was forced to rediscover his lost resolve and become a walking bulwark that would defend his people from hordes of violent savages. He told the story of a lizard, thrown into a convoluted world, who was expected to work miracles bringing an impossible project to a success in a system designed to fail, and who yet found time to help a lazy skeleton prepare to do his part in making he city a safer place. He told the story of an ambitious skeleton, who found himself disillusioned about his cooking abilities, but who also found it in himself to get back up after being knocked down and through sheer effort and dedication, put together a meal so good, that it pulled his best friend out of a spiral of depression. He told the story of a fish who lost someone very dear to her, and who would stop at nothing - even at extreme measures - to get her back. And in the end, he told him the story of two children. Two children - both of which were believed to be dead - who came back to life, took up roles of a cowgirl and a swordsman, and play-pretended a struggle of enormous proportions, with the stakes raised so far, that the existence of the world - no, the universe - as a whole hinged on which side won out.

But to the old man's disappointment, the flower's narration seemed to gloss over a point that seemed very important. "It wasn't until after their Christmas celebration was over, that I decided to seriously talk to Frisk about an idea that I had. And this idea, is why I'm telling you all this. This entire story, everything from the very beginning, was because I..."

"Wait..."

"What?"

The elderly man raised his shaky hand and struggled to point at the flower. "Don't stop there! What about the two? Asgore and Toriel?"

Flowey had to pause. For a minute there, he was worried he had lost the guy. He took a moment to figure out how to pick up where he left again and started over.

* * *

Once our conversation was over, I had some things to think about, that helped get my mind off of Asgore and Toriel. It was a struggle against the urge to step in and do something about their - uh - the state they were in. But Frisk had lighted up a glimmer of hope, that helped me carry myself all the way through. We gave them more time. Frisk continued to keep them supplied. I stayed away from Toriel's house a lot of the time. I was injuring him with my thorns and begging him to LOAD back after only a week of this. Another three days of the two of them being non-functional just from working through their grief passed. The human was already beginning to consider giving up the way I had. But then, one day, a mere few days before Christmas Eve, he woke up in his bed and noticed something. Or rather, the lack thereof. It was silent. He couldn't hear his Mom and Dad cry any more.

He struggled to keep calm, but he managed to. He brushed open the door to his room placed one foot in front of the other, carefully, slowly. And once far out enough, he could hear them at the table. You know how when something really touches you, instead of your heart rate going crazy or anything like that, you feel this slow, chilling cold slowly take hold of you? This was what he felt like, before he even arrived.

When he did get far enough to see them, they were a complete mess. Both of them. All sweaty, their fur was completely roughed up, as was Dad's mane. But their chairs were next to each other, and they were each others' arms, even then. He would then endure exactly what you would expect. Hours and hours of apologies for the two of them completely ceasing to function, ruffling of hair, the smell of two big bundles of fur that had sweated and not showered for half a month, the list goes on. But when he told me about it all, he said he had nothing to complain about. Because he had never seen the two of them more happy in his life, than then. I have memories to look back on for reference, but for him, seeing them the way they were together, in each other's arms, nuzzling each other's noses, and with that look on their faces when their gazes met, for him, this was a first. They could never truly be content with life, unless they were together.

Towards the late afternoon, they had recovered, cleaned themselves and gotten ready to prepare for festivities. It was almost Christmas after all. They were too late to get a really good tree, but they got a small one. Relieved that the Dreemurrs had recovered and made up, the skeletons, Undyne and Alphys agreed that the seven of them would celebrate Christmas the human way. Or at least try to. That was to say, in late December, not June, with egg nogg, red and white caps, exchanging gifts, along with the - at least for Papyrus - unexpected revelation that Santa Clause's secret identity was Asgore the entire time and with a mistletoe for two reunited Boss Monsters.

The Dreemurr family was no longer broken. And together, they had a magical Christmas celebration. Every day of Christmas, getting up hat this chill to it. He got exactly what he wanted. It took longer than he expected it to, we both did, but he got it eventually.I never spoke to him. But I occasionally popped up here and there, just so he saw that I was still around. I didn't want to bother him if he didn't want it. On the fifth day of Christmas, the two Boss Monsters left him at home alone. He sat in front of the TV, watching one of his Christmas presents. A DVD of that cheesy far-eastern show about people in power suits summoning giant mechs to fight off aliens. He was re-watching that episode when the main characters joined up with that lonely guy in black. Their mechs had joined up to form a more well-armed one. "Behold! Unite Mech: Enhanced Mode!" Definitely not an inspiration for anything that was said and done in real life.

I emerged from the closest pot there was. "You enjoying your Christmas presents?" He smiled back at me. "Look, I'm sorry I...I lost control back there." I was still thinking about when I almost got him to interrupt this timeline.

"Thank you. For everything." That was all that he said. We were both thankful.

"I was thinking about it. The more I watched you, the more I want to do it after all." We talked about that idea of mine back then, but I was more confident in going through with it than before. "What if Asriel being dead is also a fate we don't need to accept? If I went around collecting human souls...I could just visit people that are already dying. If I just had enough human souls for long enough, maybe it would work?"

We spent quite some time talking about it last time, there were some major problems. Frisk brought up one of them. "People would see you. What if someone who can remember sees you and you can't erase that?" That was one of them. We both knew by now, that Asriel, when wielding the power of at least seven human souls, could erase and rewrite memories of people all he liked. But we also knew that some people could remember things that happened, even if you LOADed back to before they did. And even with lots of human souls, Asriel wasn't perfect. We didn't know whether Asriel could rewrite those people's memories, too. "I don't think you can do that in secret."

He was right. I had to be open about it. I could avoid being filmed. But staying completely hidden wasn't possible. Walking around the way Asriel really looked when alive, was out of the question. What if Asgore and Toriel ran into him when that was going on? They would recognize him immediately. "Swordsman Asriel.", I responded. "As an adult, nobody will recognize him." Frisk, Undyne, Alphys and Sans were the only people that remembered seeing Asriel like that. And since they kept quiet about what happened with Chara, I could expect them to keep quiet about that, too. "I just need a name to call myself if I go through with it. People are going to ask."

The child grinned. "I think absolute god of hyperdeath is a bit overkill."

I rolled my eyes. As usual, he was right. "How about Angel of Death? It's a bit like 'Grim Reaper', and fits with collecting human souls."

The human stared off onto the floor. After giving it more consideration, he told me the one thing he cared about. "If you do it, just promise me one thing. Come home from time to time." We talked a bit more about some details, but for the most part it was decided. I would go out there, look for human souls to take without killing anyone, become Asriel, and collect more and more, until either his soul regrew, or it certainly didn't, and I would release all the souls again.

* * *

This was an ending the dying human was willing to accept. He laid back and rested his head again. "And that brings us here. Where do you look for humans that haven't died, but who will soon? A hospital. So the reason why I'm telling you wall this..."

"You want my soul...", the old man murmured.

"Think about it. I wouldn't take it until it's over. Don't you have anything left to do? Any regrets? Any unchecked boxes? You've got to have something better to do than just die."

He was old, but not senile. "What's keeping you from taking it anyway?"

The flower tried going along with it and grinned for a moment. "I could, couldn't I? But if I wanted that, I wouldn't try to justify it. I'd just do it. Why would I tell you any of this?"

"Why indeed?" He lay there without a word. Eventually, he covered his mouth so as to suppress a cough. But it turned out he didn't have to. "I have a daughter. Overseas. She made some mistakes. I would love to see her one last time." With an unsure smile, he closed his eyes and soon fell asleep. From then on in, Flowey came by regularly to check on him and ask again if he agreed to it. It took several more days and several visits from most of his family, until it happened. When it happened, it happened quickly. The Doctors tried to keep him alive, but none of them were delusional about it. No human life lasted forever. Before his soul had any time to disperse, he snuck in, found the old man's body, drew out his soul and retreated again. One soul wasn't nearly enough to work miracles, but it was a start. From here, Flowey would tell his story to those nearing their deaths, over and over. Each time with more souls and sets of memories to draw from to make more and more compelling arguments. Within a month, the Angel of Death wandered the world once more, filled with hope that he could one day return to his parents.

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NEXT TIME

"Dear god. I know I never really believed in you, but if you're somewhere out there, however it is that you do, I want you to take a message to the Angel of Death."

"Destroyers of land and man - Return to nature!"

"It's been a while since you came home. I'm getting worried. Mom and Dad are fine. They do everything together now. I'm not sure if I remember them being apart at all any more."

"Stand down, Angel! For it is I! Mephisto! And this is my attuned Monster - 「The Beast」"

"How is it going? That thing we talked about? I can't know if you don't come by to tell me. Why don't you come home anyway?"

"The Walking Cauldron has returned to the surface. And he demands that you kneel!"

"Is it because you're afraid of meeting them?"

"Oh, Elvi-elvi-elvi-elvi-elvi Elves! You sure haven't forgotten how to have fun."

"Are you afraid of what it will be like if they recognize you after all?"

"KNEEL! KNEEL BEFORE MOLOCH!"

Next story's title: The Rise of an Angel


	58. Found to Time

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Rise of an Angel

Chapter 01

Found to Time

* * *

Something had changed. It was the dawn of a new day.

He didn't know what, but even he could feel it. Sans wound around in his bed and grabbed his skull with both hands. He had a terrible headache. It felt like something was banging over and over. Bang bang. Just like that. And again, it banged twice. After enduring this a few more times, he began to realize that it wasn't in his head, someone was banging at the door. "SANS! SANS WAKE UP! THE DOCTOR IS GETTING IMPATIENT!"

Sans groaned and covered his skull with the cushion. "tell alphys it can wait. i had the weirdest dream!" The images of giant soul-power-driven monsters fighting over whether life was worth living still swirled through his mind, almost drowning out any perception of his actual surroundings.

"NOT ALPHYS, YOU SILLYBONES! THE DOCTOR! YOU KNOW, - THE - DOCTOR!"

He sighed, put the cushion aside, and supported himself to help force himself to at least sit up. "so what doc we talkin' about then?"

"WELL YOU'RE BEING AWFULLY SLOW TODAY. THE SAME DOCTOR AS EVERY SATURDAY OF COURSE. THE DOCTOR. YOU KNOW."

Without getting up, he shook his head. "no, i really, really don't."

"ARE YOU PLAYING WITH ME? IS THIS SOME SORT OF PRANK? IS THERE A CAMERA SOMEWHERE?" Papyrus stopped for a while. But from what he said next, it sounded like he was on the phone. "DOCTOR! HE ISN'T GETTING UP. YES. YES. TELLING HIM YOU'RE WAITING DOESN'T WORK. BY NAME? WELL UH, NO. I THOUGHT THAT WAS OBVIOUS. ALL RIGHT. I WILL TRY." He hung up and knocked again. "SANS! IT'S THE DOCTOR! DOCTOR WAYNE GASTER, AND HE IS GETTING IMPATIENT!"

For a moment, Sans was startled by hearing that name along. Then, he waved that off as a hallucination. "come again? what was the name?"

"GASTER! W. D. GASTER. COME ON, SANS, WE DON'T HAVE TIME TO BE LOLLYGAGGING LIKE THIS, LET'S GET GOING."

What was going on? He could tell this name to anyone, and within moments, whatever electronics were around would flicker for a second and they would forget. "sorry, come again?"

He made sure to stare at the display of his alarm clock. "I SAID, DOCTOR WAYNE DUNCAN GASTER IS WAITING AT HIS HOUSE RIGHT NOW AND THE ONLY ONE MAKING HIM WAIT, IS YOU." Not only was it Papyrus that brought up that name, but the display didn't flicker. Papyrus hadn't forgotten the name. Sans felt more and more unsure about this. It was that cold feeling you got when something was happening you wished would, but were convinced that it couldn't, and instead of being overjoyed, you were confused that it was happening to begin with. "NOW IF YOU WOULD PLEASE..."

Within a moment, Sans sped up and with superhuman speed, fetched the key, unlocked the door, left and grabbed his fully dressed brother with both hands by the scarf. "tell me where he is, right now!"

Worked up, but almost as confused as him, the skeleton looked down at him and pulled those hands off. "WHERE HE ALWAYS IS OF COURSE. HIS HOUSE."

What was happening? Was he dreaming? Was this still part of the dream? "let's go then, c'mon!" He sped right outside.

"WELL SOMEONE SURE IS MOTIVATED ALL OF A SUDDEN. OF COURSE, THAT'S THE SPIRIT. FOLLOW MY LEAD!" With eyes lighting up in the sockets of both skeletons, they sped down several streets and arrived at their destination within a few seconds. It lay further out into a corner of the village. Pretty much as far out as Undyne and Alphys' house, but in a different corner of it.

There was a little house with an uneven, curved but smooth ceiling. To both sides of a little smoothed out stone path to the front door was a garden with a variety of strange snow-covered plants, some of which Sans had seen, some of which he hadn't. And in the middle of it, just outside the front door, he stood. The Doc. In the flesh. Sans had trouble breathing. It had been so long. It was impossible. How could he be here? "doc?" Dr. Gaster stood there, slightly hunched forwards as usual, with a wide open smile. He nodded and gave Sans two thumbs up. Even now, he felt this cold sensation you felt when you got exactly what you wanted and had trouble believing that you did. He walked closer. "doc...i can't..."

Gaster nodded. "Yes! The one and only."

Like a child that hadn't seen one of their parents in years, he came stumbling straight into the Doctor's open arms. "doc! how? i don't even know...you were gone. and i failed."

Immediately, the Doc stood up straight and folded up his arms. "How so?"

"you were gone, and then chara didn't come to us like you said, and then the prince died and then..."

"Yes, yes, yes one and a half decades of misery, release from the Underground, several attacks from troops of Orcs, large sea monsters, centaurs and so on and so on, I saw everything. I was watching the entire time. But you didn't fail. Your role wasn't to take on Chara. Your role was just to stall and distract her until our prince arrived, because unlike you, he had no scruples taking human souls to become strong enough to take her on. You did perfectly fine. I was more worried about our human and our prince pulling through."

"b-b-but then it was real. that with chara?"

"Yes, our prince came back from the dead to fight his long lost friend in a desperate battle for the continued existence of the universe. This is the one timeline where he won. And then he restored everyone. Even me!"

Sans wouldn't let go of the Doc's robe. He was like a child, seeing him for the first time. The Doc seemed to take all of this pretty well though. "where were you? i thought you were gone forever."

"HE WASN'T ANYWHERE. WHY ARE YOU ACTING SO STRANGE?" The taller skeleton was left scratching his skull.

The Doc just raised a finger at that. "I will explain everything in due time. Why don't the two of you come in for a cup of tea. Apparently, you do that every week nowadays." The Doc's house was strange. It was like a one-room apartment, but bigger. With very short walls only separating the minimal amount. It was very spacious. In fact, there was a staircase far to the right of the entrance door that led up several floors, even though on the outside, it was clearly a one-story house. A kitchen counter was the only thing that brought any separation between the little corner that was the kitchen and the rest of the house. "So it turns out, I was the one that created the rift!"

Apparently, he just 'picked up' from where he left off when they last really talked. It had been nearly two decades by that point. But it had been something that went more towards two millennia worth of memories in Sans' mind. Too many repeating timelines. "The rift was my creation. And once it was large enough, I fell right through it. As did a lot of things."

* * *

It was time. Time for the Doctor to test out this new time machine he and Sans had built. The test runs with animals had worked. There was no way around testing it himself any more. He stepped into the time machine, pulled the robe after him, and shouted back to Sans: "Wish me luck and good bye, little Sans. If anything goes wrong, I leave everything for you. Just don't do anything I wouldn't do. When I come back, I will as an official time traveler!" With this, Doctor Gaster closed the door, adjusted the controls to remain roughly at the same point in time, but to travel further up just onto the surface. A short stretch with little to no gap in time to cause any further issues. The safest trip he could think of. When it was all done, the moment of truth was upon him. The actual firing up of the engines was locked behind a hard-to-move lever, which itself was covered by a lid. Just to make sure no-one hit it accidentally. When he pulled it, he thought about closing his eyes for a moment. He couldn't look. When it finally happened, the entire machine shook. If he wasn't secured in a safety belt, he would have banged the walls left and right. Hard to describe cracking and crushing noises surrounded him for god knew how long. Finally, one last crash launched him to land with his skull on the wall to his left after all, but the machine finally came to a halt. He did not plan for the trip to be this tumultuous. In fact, any animal testing didn't leave any indication that it was supposed to be.

With another bang and some loud clanking, a panel below him broke off of where it was nailed and a smoke so vile came out it was painful to breathe. He immediately opened the door to see what was outside. And upon seeing he was exactly where he started, he left without further ado. He was still in the little room they had set up for the time machine. With the same dark, but clean walls. With all the detached cables, the little console, all left-behind equipment. Even the little cage with a live rabbit in it. But Sans was gone. "Sans? Little Sans? Where'd you go?" He checked his watch. It synced up with the central clock in his lab. He was exactly where he had left. Same day, same hour, same minute, he was where he started to the second. He wandered through the doorframe. "Sans?" It was completely silent. The only things he could hear were the echoes of his steps. He almost made it back to the lift, by the time he arrived, he finally heard something. More echoes. More echoes of his steps from what it sounded like. Only that he wasn't moving. And down the hall, something was indeed approaching him. A skeleton clad in a robe with two scar-like 'breaks' in his skull. The person approaching him was himself - or at least looked like himself carrying around a flat piece of tech he was staring at.

"Ah, there you are!" Other-Gaster didn't seem surprised to see him at all and approached him with new-found confidence the moment he had spotted him. "I thought you should be around here somewhere." He put down the tablet device. The two Wingdingses proceeded to stare at each other for a long time. "I presume you have a lot of questions. I know I did." He even had his voice.

"You could say that again.", the Doctor answered. "Who are you?"

Other-Gaster smiled and raised a finger. "Aha. That is the wrong question. You shouldn't be asking 'who am I', but 'what am I', and moreso, you should be asking 'what are you'?" He picked up the device again and turned around. "Come on, let's not waste any time." He paused and chuckled. "Well, it's not as if we don't have any, but let's get on with it anyway. The sooner you have an idea, the sooner you can get to doing your part."

"Wait, where is Sans?" He tried to stop other-Gaster, but he wouldn't let Wayne stop him.

The other skeleton waved it off. "Nah he's safe and sound right where you left him. We aren't where you think we are. This isn't really the lab - well - not the one he's in. You shouldn't so much worry about the here and now, more so about the...well that's hard to describe. There is a time you should be worrying about, but there isn't an accurate tense to summarize it in one word." They seemed to follow the hallway all the way down into one of the siderooms that weren't in use for anything.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but I do believe we are in my lab in the Underground."

Other-Gaster raised a finger again. "That is exactly where you're wrong. We aren't. We aren't even on Earth. Or anywhere near where you think we are." Confusing, but he was prepared to face confusing things. Wingdings and Sans had spent a century preparing for this. He had gone through all kinds of time-travel-related scenarios he could come up with. So all he had to do for the time being was to remain curious and to find out what was going on around him. It all really did look like the halls of his laboratory. But Sans was nowhere to be found and the only person here was other-him. So the only real option he had was to follow the one lead he had on what was going on, and that was that one other person. "That way. Here we are." They stopped in a little unused side room, after walking a few circles along the walls. Other-Gaster pointed at two markings on the floor he had made with a glowing marker. "I'm going to have to mark it more permanently. Come along. Wait, no. Don't come along. Stop." He physically made Wingdings stop. This seemed to be urgent. He pointed at the markings again. "Do not step outside of those. It won't work if you do."

What next happened was most perplexing. Other-Gaster carefully raised one foot, and then planted it behind the markings. The leg disappeared behind the wall. And so did the rest of him. He simply phased right through it. After a few seconds, he phased back in through the lab wall and peeked back at the confused skeleton. "Come along. Nothing happens so long as you stick to the instructions." Carefully, Wingdings came closer and grabbed the wall to both sides outside of the markings. There was nothing there. Then slowly, he leaned forward and 'peeked' behind the wall with his head. He felt nothing upon reaching the wall, it was like it wasn't even there. Immediately upon looking 'through it', he was faced with the fresh air of a sunny day outside...on a highway on the surface. The blue, barely cloudy sky made it clear that it was indeed somewhere between spring and summer, just like he expected it to be when he arrived after his first trip through time. A few cars stood on the highway. Empty. In the distance, he could see complexes that indicated the level of technological sophistication he could expect from humanity by this point. He was staring down at all of this scenery, from the top of a set of stairs, put together from scrap metal, leading down from exactly where his foot would arrive, should he step out here. "Come along." The other him was already on the ground, between this staircase and another one further down the road, that just 'ended' in the middle of the air. Much like this one upon closer inspection. When he peeked in only with his head and looked down and behind him, he figured that he must have really looked like a disembodied head floating just above this makeshift staircase.

"What in the world is all of this." He ended up giving it a try and stepping right through. It was refreshing feeling the summer breeze graze his skull for the first time. And the staircase seemed stable enough. Always gripping one side of it with a hand, he gradually made his way down towards the impatient skeleton. "So? What is it?"

"Do you at least believe me that we aren't in the Underground any more?"

"Yes, I am pretty sure my version of the lab didn't have portal-shaped spatial curvatures in the walls."

"Would you believe me if I told you we aren't on the surface either?"

The Doctor nodded. "Well, if 'the lab' isn't 'the lab', then it would make sense that this up here isn't 'the surface' either."

"Very good. On to the next." Now a bit more motivated, the other skeleton marched on. Quite a bit further down the road, he went up the other makeshift staircase and vanished in the middle of the air. There wasn't much of an alternative but to follow him. But Wingdings nonetheless readied a little gadget from within his robe. A cylindrical multi-use tool that he could expand into a force field, a solid umbrella and a parachute, all depending on what he needed. The landscape around the road was a lot like he expected it. Green fields lined the long roads between villages and towns. In the distance, he could see the coast and the city. They still were in the Atelian coastal region, right where Monsters were banished. But even further down the highway, any cars that were on it were empty. Most weren't parked. In fact based on all the scratches, broken windscreens and collided husks that they were indicated that they were moving at one point and then simply came to a halt naturally. Some were crashed into the rocky wall, some had broken through the railing at the side of the cliff and fallen down. His first guess was that it was as if this was a highway on the surface in one moment, and in the next, all humans disappeared. The bits and pieces that indicated accidental destruction pointed roughly in that direction. But for the time being, he couldn't know any better.

A lot less unsure, he stepped up the stairs, peeked through into the air behind it and found himself staring out of his time machine, back in the lab. "What?" Other-Gaster was waiting here intently. It was the exact same room he found himself in when he left the time machine. And when he stepped into the air behind the staircase, he inedited ended up standing right outside of his time machine, in the exact same place.

The other skeleton stared at his device for a moment, then looked back up. "Would you believe me that we're still not in the Underground?" He nodded. There wasn't much of a reason to believe that. Even here, there was no sign of Sans. But when they went down the exact same hallway towards the lift, they did come across someone. They came across himself. Twice. Two more versions of himself were sitting around an obscure little machine, with screws and pieces of metal all around. Both with welders, fixing up something. "Ah, third and fourth. I think I found 'First'." He pointed at Wingdings. The two only briefly waved at him and then went back to fixing whatever they were working on. "No worries, we're all confused in the very beginning. Those two have already gotten used to it." Without further ado, they passed them as well as the lift and took a slightly different route through this level in the lab.

This was the point for the Doctor ask some more questions. He sped up to catch up with the other 'him'. "I'm sorry, but did you just call me 'First'? Were you referring to me?"

The other Gaster smiled. "Yes. In fact, I was." He stopped and offered to shake hands, which Wingdings accepted. "This might be the time for introductions. 'ello. I'm 'Second'."

"Second? You have numbers?"

Second seemed a bit weirded out, now. "Yes. We have numbers. There's a lot more of us than you would be comfortable knowing. Believe me, we have all been through this. Every last one of us." They went on for quite a bit to get to the next marked wall. "Now then. We are getting closer to the point where I can tell you where we are, without you thinking you're dreaming or looking for some alternative explanation. Stop!"

Wayne was about to follow up and try to peek through the wall, but a solid grip from 'Second' held him back. "Now, before you look what is behind that wall, I need to ask you something. It will help you understand faster. It definitely helped me when Third introduced me to all this. When you were first using that time machine to travel, what was going through your head? If your first travel to the surface had been a success, where were you planning on going?"

"Well, civilization. I would look to see what the humans had been up to by then. I saw a city when we were outside. Going there might have given me some insight."

Second nodded and smiled. "So you agree that - were you not here - would your first time travels have gone as planned, you would have tried visiting that city next?" While still careful not to agree on anything he didn't want to, Wingdings slowly nodded. "All right. With that in mind..." He stepped back and gestured towards the wall with an open hand. "...by my guest. See what lies on the other side." Upon peeking through, he immediately looked up a wide square made of both concrete and pieces of stone molten in a failed attempt at making an aesthetically pleasing pattern. At the side was another road, painted on to mark where the tracks for cars lay. Cars were parked and run into walls as well as the well in the middle, similarly to how they were on the highway. Newspapers and bits and pieces of fliers lay spread across the ground, and the entire area was surrounded by tall, yet blocky skyscrapers. He stepped through and found himself to be in the middle of a human city on the surface.

Soon enough, Second followed him through the invisible portal. "So. Are you any closer to any realizations? Any grand epiphanies?"

Wingdings scratched his chin. "I have a few ideas."

"Yes, I know exactly what you mean. I wasn't much wiser at this point either. Come on, let's go." This was the city. Perhaps the same city he saw in the distance out on the highway. Abandoned food carts, wide open shop doors, it was a completely abandoned square. As if inner city life was just suddenly interrupted by everyone disappearing. And Second led him around several streets and corners, further and further out, until they came across a building with quite a bit of space around it, seeing as it wasn't directly connected to other shops or similar establishments. The streets around it were very dark, as the entire area from the building itself to the ones surrounding it was covered by cables running through all the windows above as well as two of it's entrances like an extravagant umbrella. "Yes, that's where we're headed. It's a hub. The hub closest to where you started. We set these up regularly. Our arrivals were too recent for us to get around to setting up one for each of us. Apart from that, we are pretty far in the furthermost corner, we will have to make do with this." The stairs were steep, but laid out with smooth marble. "This used to be a hotspot. Not a main server for human electronics, far from that, but it is enough for us to interface with the rest." What rest

Behind an open door was an office area. Every bit of the outside wall that didn't have cables come in and connect both to computers lining the window, or be stuck along the ceiling to connect to the inner wall to the right, was lined with desktop computers. At the chairs in front of them sat skeletons. Himself. Lots of himselves. Upon entering the room, he immediately saw nearly a dozen of himself and there were more right around the corner. And entering drew the attention of all of them. Some got up, some stayed right where they were and got back to whatever they were doing on their computers. One of them came closer and greeted Second. "Is it him?"

Second nodded. "Yes."

"The very first one?"

"I'd be very surprised if not."

The other 'him' laughed for a moment and then shook Wingdings' hand. "Well hello then. I'm 'Thirty-Seventh'. You are and always will officially be the most confused of all of us. Every single one of us you will meet will have been accustomed to time travel more than you when we first arrived here."

"This is all very nice, but when do we get to the part where you give me any idea of what in the world all this is?" Wingdings was getting really impatient with Second. But it appeared that this time, he finally gave in.

"All right. Thirty-Eighth, Thirty-Ninth, let's show him New Home. New Home in the year two thousand." Two more Gasters got to opening a few windows on their respective computers and started something. From the ceiling, another screen extended itself to point right onto Wingdings - or 'First' as they called him.

The screen displayed random places, signs in particular, from up close. "* Free apples.", "* Open all night." Most of them were advertisements. Not all of them. All of them had one common denominator. "* On-stage sensation, one robot enthralls all of Underground." Every sentence began with that symbol. An asterisk. A sign he made up. And that he later discovered was on human software.

"First, remember when I told you what questions you should be asking?", Second began. He stepped closer to the screen to point at it. "It's because you think you're Wayne Duncan Gaster, don't you? You believe you are, so you must be, correct? Well you're not. See those asterisks? Those are him. Those are where he really is."

In a pretense of understanding, First nodded. "All right, let me humour you. If that is Wayne, then who am I? Who are you? Who are all of us?"

"All right, First. Bear with me. Do you remember when you traveled through time?"

"No?"

"Well you pulled the lever, didn't you? You adjusted the coordinates. If you had traveled through time just before arriving where I found you, would you have noticed?"

"Well...I would presume not." A grim realization was far away, but already visible at his mental horizon.

"How would you know? You never did so before. But you did. Or much rather, you didn't. Wayne did. Wingdings traveled through time, by the point you are at, only once. That point, that very moment he traveled through time for the first time, that particular moment in his timeline, that is you. That's what 'First' stands for in your case. Every travel through time occurs at a particular moment in our timeline and you are the very first one we had. I'm the second one. He's the thirty-eighth and he the thirty-ninth. We are all just moments in the Doctor's timeline. Ripped out of it and thrown around here. Snapshots from him the way he was. Launched here together with snapshots of his immediate surroundings. The highway I led you to, that road, that's where I ended up. I appeared in the middle of the air, it was pretty painful." He turned back to the screen. "And before we get to where we are, as for the other moments. All the other moments of his timeline, the asterisks, those are the rest. We are the moments when Wayne breached the fabric of reality. We are stuck here. The rest of him is spread across the universe. Lost to time, yet present at all times and everywhere.

As for where we are, let me strike out to give you the abstract of what happened to us." The screen began displaying multiple three-dimensional graphs with coordinate systems to help accompany what Second was telling him. "Every breach through the fabric of reality opens a minor - well - breach. In theory, it shouldn't be of any concern. Time reasserts itself, the universe repairs itself along the axis of every single timeline simultaneously. Unless..."

He began to understand and tried to complete his sentence. "...unless You breach it at too high a frequency along the same timeline."

"Exactly. That, aided by overlapping breaches with those of other time travelers causes the fracture to be so large, it creates a rift, situated always at the exact location the time traveler in question is at when it happens. The last few of us were past the point of Wayne finding it. But he didn't know what it was and went into a frenzy, traveling from one corner of the universe to the next, over and over, in an attempt to solve the problem."

"And that way, he turned it into an actual problem, didn't he?"

"Yep. Time and space in many ways acts like mass. So if you have a rift that leads to outside of the universe where there is none of it, guess what happens."

"It gets sucked out."

"Yep. Like a door into the vacuum of space opening. Only that this time it isn't just mass that gets vacuumed out."

"But time and space as well. And other dimensions."

Second nodded. "Yes...go on."

"Which would create an environment for objects to remain intact and events to occur. Wait, are you telling me this is where we are? An unstable pocket universe, maintained through nothing but a constant, omnipresent stream of space and time from our universe?"

"Yep. The universe expands, so it isn't as awful as it sounds, but it is pretty bad. It is still broken. Wayne bits and pieces are still scattered across it and to anyone within it, it's as if he had never existed. We can all smile and laugh about it, because if there is one thing of which we have a lot here, it is time. And we are using it to analyze and try to fix the problem. Even though to this point, with little success. It all manifested as a catastrophic event at the final point of entry, and rebounded across Wayne's timeline. The very last moment he traveled through time became the very first one of us. We figured there wasn't much use of finding an immediate solution until the rebound is complete. The completion is you. You're the last one. The last piece of the puzzle. The catastrophic event comes to a natural halt after you, thus it loses it's momentum. From here, finding solutions becomes a lot easier."

"So if I understand correctly, Wayne dissolved and was spread across all of space and time."

"Yep."

"In that case, in the current iteration of any timelines present, it would be as if he had never been there."

"Yep. Gone. Wiped off the map. If you asked someone - anyone, they'd insist none of us ever existed. But we couldn't contact anyone in the universe until now. Any signal we sent was drowned out by the incessant stream of bits and pieces of Wayne's timeline flowing into here."

"Which would no longer be the case, now that I am here.", First concluded.

Second smiled. "Exactly."

First took a moment to take all of this in. "Hmm." It didn't take long until he had something. Not an idea, but a start. "Do you have any data on tracked timelines here? Something a bit like..."

Second clapped his hands and pointed at him. "The time machine's navigation system!"

"Yes."

"Yes we do. Bring it up on the screen, guys!" They did. On a black background, thin lines of faint red began covering the graph. An axis at the bottom of the screen indicated that the display was laid out chronologically along the last few years as well as a few decades forward. As more and more lines - each depicting a timeline - branched out and overlapped from a central cluster roughly where the Gasters would have placed the Underground, it became apparent that there was a cluster. First it shone in bright red, then in pink, then it was so bright it was all in white. "What is that? Zoom in closer." It occurred in two main bursts. One of the sources of all these timelines was roughly situated from the two-thousand to the year two-thousand-and-four. The other was a smaller, but more concentrated cluster pressed so much together, they couldn't really see the sea of little branched out timelines until they zoomed in on a single day in the summer of two-thousand and fifteen. "So many different timelines on a single day."

"Yep, we've been way ahead of you. This particular cluster is caused by that boy right there." A different window opened up with various video feeds depicting a human. A child in a blue and purple sweater wandering through the Underground. "He must have fallen down that hole in Mount Ebott, like little Sans." A yellow human at that. Very unusual considering they were in the Atelian coastland.

"Actually." Mostly on impulse, the Doctor pulled out an electronic interfacing device, pointed it at the computer one of the two others were operating to show him these graphs. "Give me his number." Without the other two helping him, he got it on the screen, pulled out a phone and dialed it immediately."

"Wait, First, what are you doing?"

"If Wayne being shattered leaves him without a coherent timeline, then forcing it back together by reminding determined people of him, might help." The human on the footage stopped at the river, when he received a phone call. He wasn't sure how to go about it, but he tried pretending he was asking for someone. "Hello! Can I speak to G..." Then he looked down to see his other selves make very alarming gestures and mouthing things like 'No' and 'Stop, don't'. One of the two at the window opened up a text editing program and typed out a message in very large letters so he could clearly read it. 'Important series of timelines' He stalled on the phone to give the other snapshots some time to tell him more. "Wait a second." The next message on the screen read 'must not disrupt' Well, they were him and he were they, this must have been very important. It was probably best if he found a cop-out and stopped this phone call after all. "Is this the wrong number?", he asked into the phone, and then quickly hit the 'wrong number' button to play the wrong number jingle and then hang up.

You could see the other Waynes, even more further down the length and the corner of the room wipe the sweat of their skulls. Furious, Second pointed at him. "You have no idea what you almost did! We can't interrupt what this human is doing!"

"Why, what could be so major about the timelines he is creating?" And after that, the other Gasters proceeded to show him everything. Quite a lot of things, most of which were completely awful, happened after the very one's travels caused Wingdings to be ripped apart and removed from any causal chains in the Underground. "Oh goodness, please don't." They showed him the desperate situation Sans found himself after the time machine came back without him. They showed him how Chara arrived in the Underground and failed to visit the lab when she was supposed to. "Oh, no...", he whispered with dread in his voice. They showed him Chara's plan, they showed him Asriel trying to bring her outside and they showed him what happened to the prince after that. "Oh no!" They showed him Asgore's furious declaration of war, Toriel's departure. "God gracious, no!" Showing him the tragedies that happened after he disappeared, it shattered every Gaster that came here. But he couldn't stop watching. They showed him the journey of every human that fell into the Underground, the only hope coming from the other Gasters assuring him that things would get better as time went on. They showed him snippets of the endless repetitions of timelines, caused by the Monsters' prince, revived as a talking flower with the necessary determination to create new timelines. And Sans' attempts at finding the one creating them. "Little Sans...what have I done?"

"Nothing yet. You didn't. Some of us can't say the same."

Then, ten years after the constant resets caused by the prince stopped, he arrived. The human they were anticipating. The yellow one in blue and purple. The first timelines took a dark turn half-way through his journey through the Underground. Getting killed over and over drove him mad enough to start over and slaughter his way past every single Monster, dangerous or not. An even more repetitious battle between him and little Sans, along with data they showed him to explain the context, made clear to him how close it got to all of creation ending at the hands of a little determined child. After that, he became more reasonable, used his ability to learn all attack patterns any initially hostile Monsters had off by heart to dodge and befriend them. Later snippets showed that he developed a routine. He would travel through the Underground, after getting beaten, the soulless shell of the prince that was a talking flower would bring him to the other side of the barrier, he would then break down, realise that he couldn't live with this timeline and begin his journey through the Underground anew. This would repeat itself over and over and over, until he finally reached a timeline where all the Monsters he befriended gathered in one place. Only for the soulless husk of the prince to absorb them all, become and omnipotent being and begin to fight him. "Oh goodness." And yet somehow, in spite of the odds, the little human had only one soul, yet that one soul's determination was so strong, he could restore himself through any damage and any hardship the prince gave him. All the way to the point where he used his determination to connect with the Monsters he befriended and through them, step by step, even if only briefly, bring back into the prince's consciousness the feelings of compassion and love he once knew in his life. This was enough to appease the prince and make him not only restore the bodies of all Monsters, in all of the Underground, but also to destroy the barrier, completely. Had Wingdings - no - First - interrupted the human's timeline, this may not have happened. Things may have taken some horrible turn before First, Second, all the moments in this place could have found a way to reassemble Wingdings' timeline.

With the barrier removed, the child and Asgore, Toriel, little Sans, Papyrus, a yellow lizard and a blue fish visited the surface for the first time. Upon staying the night, a well-dressed human approached them, accompanied and drove them around. The surface had become a mad house, riddled with ever-expanding laws and government offices and self-contradictions. Police that covered up crime, journalists that suppressed news stories, political committees advertising themselves to try to solve a problem and then dedicating themselves towards maintaining it. In the time they spent together, the human explained most things to Asgore. Gaster felt like his heart sunk - not that he had one the way a human did - when he saw an Elf talk to the king and finance the Monsters' venture on the surface. It got a bit better when an orange human with a blonde hairdo came to visit and helped Asgore efficiently put it to use to expand on a tiny, aging human village to turn it into a significantly wider haven - a foothold for Monsters on the surface.

He watched Asgore defend his people against an entire troop of Orcs. And then two tide-riders on a beach, blue fish-like Monsters - defend any present Monsters against a giant lizard creature from the sea. He watched the Monsters make themselves comfortable with the idea of living on the surface. A lot of back and forth was involved with some Monsters not finding it to be worth the effort. He watched the celebrations of the grand reveal be prepared, he watched a large battle between Asgore, some Temmies and an army of Orcs equipped with beasts large enough to level the buildings the Monsters had just erected. He watched the Monsters that had just settled on the surface, prepare to study for careers on the surface. He watched Papyrus and the friend he made in the Doctor's absence do their best to prepare to become productive members of society. He watched both Sans and Papyrus face off with centaurs, who were still there and terrified of what could happen to them. And he watched when Alphys - the lizard that had befriended the skeletons through the tiderider - was abducted and made to build a soul extractor for what lay ahead.

It all was a setback, a setback with many tragedies, but after seeing what he saw, First knew what to do. He joined all the other moments in the Doctor's timeline that were stuck in this place in their endeavour. Together, they did a lot of things simultaneously. The last few, the first to appear, only had returning to the universe in mind. But by the time they had set up the measuring equipment as well as an infrastructure to keep up an influx of supplies both in regards to electronics, as well as food and shelter for every moment that arrived, they realised the time they had here had to be put to use for a lot more. An outside perspective gave them ways to monitor time that Wingdings didn't have. Having to look into the universe from outside, meant not being limited to the timeline you're in or a spectrum of timelines adjacent to yours, you could see the entirety of it. And not only abstract lines following them on graphs, but you could access cameras and even establish remote live feeds where there were no cameras.

They could monitor a lot of series of events from several perspectives, both to predict where things would lead, and to track chains of events backwards from their end results. But more importantly, they could see that what the Temmies were doing wasn't nearly as mysterious and incomprehensible as they first thought. There was a coherent plan behind what they did. The Temmies were well aware of Wingdings' predicament. It took a lot longer for the other moments to show First the measurements and their detailed analysis of it, but there was a problem. The rift was still open. In fact if it wasn't, the moments, the asterisks, all of Wingdings would be ripped part for good and just fizzle out of existence completely. That would have been better than the state he was in now. Because with the rift open, this pocket universe the moments were stuck in and the universe they came from, were constantly connected, and a constant stream of mass, space and time alike was drifting and expanding into the pocket universe. The universe was unstable, and the Temmies had set up facilities, specifically to maintain stability for as long and as extensively as they could. But either way, a solution had to be found. There was no way to just force the rift shut, Wingdings being shattered the way he was, was preventing it. So he needed to be brought back. It required something that could take hold of every moment at once. Every point where he traveled through time had to be accessed by one entity simultaneously. Even the Temmies couldn't do that. But there was something that in theory, could. A thing that, throughout most of history, people avoided becoming at all costs, because in most cases, it always led to disaster. The sacrilege. A Monster - or a similar being - with human souls. A being so powerful, their perception transcended space and time itself, would be able to do it.

And the Temmies were allowing a scenario - a very precarious scenario - to happen, where not only that would happen, but the damages of most of the tragedies that had happened in other times and on other planets because of the Doctor's carelessness, would be undone. They were preparing for something huge to happen, and for themselves only to serve a minor role in it. Wingdings - or rather the moments that were trapped here, did their part, too. Now that communication, in weak forms, was possible with the regular universe, they sent messages to Sans when they needed to, to feed him information from the future to keep things on the right track. There were timelines where the village was attacked, parts of it burned down, and a lot of the inhabitants killed by centaurs. Which was why he needed to make it clear to Sans that the centaurs he met, the ones that would launch this attack, had to die when he faced off with them. That timeline was prevented. And the Temmies, they retook their city, they helped Asgore when he needed help with an army of Orcs. But most importantly, they defended the earth, when most of humanity, even the human and the prince were barely aware of it. Most advanced species in the universe, everyone that was capable of time travel and even some that were only capable of faster-than-light space travel, were in a complete panic.

Every advanced species that could, attacked earth, but was caught and stopped before they could get anywhere near the surface. By the Temmies. An endless, merciless battle between highly superior spacecraft took place in the skies of the earth, and nobody really noticed that it was happening. As for why.

Anyone with a time machine and a corresponding navigation system would sooner or later discover something. An end. The timelines would just end at a certain point, in the Winter of two-thousand-fifteen. Something that happened on earth would remove any potential for events - thus any indicator necessary to track timelines, and events could only occur, if there was nothing for them to occur with. If there was nothing that moved. And that usually meant that there was nothing there to begin with. Something that happened on earth would cause everything, every planet, every star, every galaxy, to disappear. And many timelines were created where it did. That thing, was Chara. The girl some of the later moments were convinced was the peak of the convergence, the most determined human in existence. When in fact, the peak wasn't Chara. It was Frisk. The yellow boy that ended up leading the Monsters to the surface in the timelines that resulted from the Doctor never existing.

Chara - a soulless essence, had latched onto Frisk when he came into contact with her grave in the depths of the ruins. On the surface, she drifted from human to human until she found her match. A serial killer who just so happened to be the mayor of the city that neighboured the Monsters' new foothold. Because that mayor - Mayor Wimble, had enough LOVE for Chara to take her soul, she did. She used Mayor Wimble's position and the knowledge about souls she and Frisk had gathered underground and Alphys, to set up and power a machine capable of taking a Monster's soul without destroying their body. She had a friend of Alphys', an orange, overweight dragon, abducted and forced Alphys to perform the entire procedure with him. Leading to Chara - with two human souls - inhabiting the dragon's body. A being with a Monster's body and the full power of multiple human souls, capable of taking more human souls and perfectly willing to end themselves and all of creation with them. The one scenario that should never happen in all space and time. And yet, it didn't lead to what it would make anyone fear of happening. Whether or not he had a soul, whether or not he had any stake in the world existing, when he was most needed, Prince Asriel - 'Flowey' at the time - stepped up to the plate as the world's ardent defender, wrestled the fate of the universe from Chara's hands and the human that led the Monsters to freedom, he fought at his side.

And only in this series of events, would the prince once again stand there willingly, with at least seven human souls. In fact, with eight. With clear enough a mind to reach out. To be receptive to messages aimed at him in the manner in which they needed to be. When the time finally came, in snapshots of their surroundings throughout every accessible part of the pocket universe the Doctor had created, the moments lay in wait. And prepared a distress signal to launch the prince's way. They all tried to contact his mind. Simultaneously. And through all entry points of the rift, from points spread across all of the universe. A signal involving all the information he needed. And in the end, it was enough. He picked up on it, he understood what little he needed to understand. His power grabbed hold of every single moment that was stuck here and pulled them all back into the universe. With these moments in complete form being present, the rest of Wingdings' fragmented timeline gravitated onto them and reformed the skeleton's entire being. The chain reaction their re-entry caused, rippled throughout all of space and time. Events in every inhabited system were rewritten, nothing stayed the same. Along the Doctor's long and convoluted personal timeline, from the very last moment of entry onwards, the rifts closed, events re-occurred in different ways, wars ended, conflicts were prevented, famines alleviated, the Doctor had returned to the world, and soon enough found himself with the combined memories of all moments, in a house that wasn't there before, on a piece of property that didn't belong to the village before. By the hand of the prince, the universe was rewritten completely, to feature him in it again, along with most of his past travels.

* * *

The Doctor intently watched the kettle boil it's water while the other two skeletons listened to his story. Once the water was done, he poured it into three different cups, prepared with bags of three different brands of tea. "The only people this didn't apply to, who weren't affected the same fragments of my shattered timeline, were two key people that were closely connected with my time travels and why I made them. This left them completely infused with asterisks, to the point where they both already were an implicit asterisk. One of them is right here among us."

"THEY ARE?"

"It's you. You want to know why people react differently to you? What was different?"

"YES?"

"It's the asterisks. Everyone spoke with them, except you. That is why. That and nothing else."

"uhh" Sans didn't know what to say to that.

"Now Sans. I will repeat it several more times later in a lecture I will give to three people, you two included."

"yeah?"

"Do you remember the tissue-needle-scissors figure I often use to explain timeline changes?"

"yeah, why?"

"Because that is exactly what happened - again - right around us." He placed the younger skeletons' teacups on the counter and hasted to a different corner to pull a movable black board closer and start drawing on it with a piece of chalk. "The universe as we know it, ended up having three different states. First comes the intact state, that is to say, the state from before the rift occurred. When all my time travels happened in order and history played out the way it should have. Then, I overdid it and was stuck in a pocket universe. By lacking me, the universe ended it's 'broken' state." He noted down 'Broken Universe' as a second state of three on the board. "And then, thanks to our prince, I was returned. We are now in the 'repaired' state. Not the same state as before,but a completely new one. Three different states with completely separate courses of history across all timelines that ever formed. We are now in a set of timelines where I was always there with you. You don't believe me? Ask Papyrus."

"YEP. HE WAS ALWAYS WITH US."

"Show him the photos, Papyrus." Papyrus proceeded to pull up his phone to show Sans his photo gallery. After sifting through a long list of shopped selfies came the pictures they were referring to. Pictures taken by various cameras of all the Monsters that first left the Underground. Sans and Papyrus, Tori and Asgore, Frisk, Undyne and Alphys. And the Doc. The Doc was right there with them on each one. He was on the picture of their first breakfast on the surface, when this William guy showed up. He was right there next to Asgore when Asgore gave his first big interview. He was there when Dan Victor passed by as a little vacation from his presidential campaign. He was there when they took their first trip to the beach. He was there when Mettaton's shows on the surface made their premiere, when the Monsters celebrated the founding of the new village, he was always there. Sitting or standing next to them. Giving a thumbs up with a wide open smile. Which was a bit in the uncanny valley considering what he looked like. And all of this even though Sans clearly remembered him not being there. "Do you understand now? Time rewrote itself so as to have me always having been there. It's as if I was never gone. The scissors left the tissue, but the tissue was left changed. Time still took a course similar to where things went in the 'broken' state. And where things went in the 'broken state' affects where things go now. Which is why this is not just the 'intact state' being restored, but a separate, third state. The 'repaired state' is the state where up to this point, things proceeded more or less as if the universe was still in it's 'broken' state, while it isn't broken any more.

So to summarize, to a degree, when Chara said the world's fate was sealed, she was right. But by pinpointing exactly where the universe was broken, our prince managed to repair it, and thus change fate in a way most would have considered completely impossible. Everything is different now. Even the indigenous species of other planets are affected. The Elmoes are once again defeated, the Doges are docile, the Ayylmaos are back to never having existed. That was not the case in the broken universe. I never existed, so I was never there to eradicate them before they developed faster-than-light space travel."

"woah, woah, woah there. you're droppin' a load o' stuff on us here."

He was lucky to get the Doc to stop right at that. Almost surprised by Sans' wish for him to slow down, he put down the chalk and nodded. "Yes. Yes, you're right. All in it's due time." He marched back to the front door, opened it to reveal the village on a winter morning and take a deep breath. "Enjoy the fresh air of Shoneon Village in the Winter, look forward to christmas. Because once it is warmer, when the sun shines and the children in the school are - well - not in the school because no-fun-goat sends them off to an extended holiday, I am going to ask her to lend us a room so I can give you a complete rundown on everything you need to know by the time it begins."

"wait, what begins?"

Immediately, the doc raised a finger and turned around to face him. "That, little Sans, is the right question."


	59. Elders and Gods

.

Rise of an Angel

Chapter 02

Elders and Gods

* * *

A few months after Asriel's and Chara's brief, heated reunion and Doctor Gaster's return not long before Christmas, Toriel called off school for a few weeks to give the families of all the children some time to arrange for themselves. For the entire time up until then, the school was more of a preparatory institution, addressing all the children individually to bring them up to speed so they could start at standardized grades that were in sync with all the human schools on the surface. The perfect time, for the Doctor to arrange for himself to use one of the classrooms with the Queen's permission. "Good morning." With his back turned to them from going over what was on the black board, Wingdings greeted the three that were entering. Sans, Papyrus and Alphys had gathered here and greeted him back. It was a classroom like all the others. With short desks and small chairs to fit both human children and human adults. Only Toriel needed extra chairs to match her size. Posters from ineffective class workshops lined the walls, and Gaster wiped off the remainders of what he had drawn on the board just the day before. When the three of them sat down, he finally clapped his hands. "Now, we finally get to the crux of the issue. Everything before was just about the challenges that lay behind us. From here, we move forward towards the end of this struggle."

"struggle?" For the entire last week, Wingdings made the three of them come here to summarize a broad range of subjects from how certain types of Monsters operated to what methods of appeasement Elves used. Without ever actually telling them what for. And he did it a lot like a teacher or a lecturer lecturing a class on a specific subject. Sans had long learned to just go along with it and ask whenever the Doc implied that there was a question to be asked.

Wingdings smiled. "Of course. This was all part of a greater struggle of humanity and Monsterkind against their own self-indulgence. Their self-indulgence lies personified in the true enemy in all this."

Alphys gasped and raised her hand. "The Elves?" After spending so much of that past week on Wingdings lecturing them on how evil they were and how they operated, that was of course her first guess. She was glad she had picked up on how the Doctor ticked.

"No, not Elves. Boss Monsters." Only for her newfound hope to be shot down again.

Papyrus was just as confused. "WAIT...WHAT?" The same Boss Monsters so many of which lived in New Home? The same ones like Asgore and Toriel?

Gaster expected him to think that way, raised her hand and waved that way. "Not all the Boss Monsters of course. Only a small group of very old, very self-indulgent and sexually perverted Boss Monsters. As to why, let me take a few steps back. Remember the tissue-metaphor. Tissue, needle, scissors. Whenever time realigns itself into a new timeline after a previous one is interrupted by means of time travel or determination, the changes that were the most impactful in the previous timeline, remain in the next one. At least to a degree. It's not a guarantee, it's not an absolute but a very reliable tendency. And in this case, it held true. Sans." He pointed at the child-sized skeleton with a stern tone in his voice. "What comes next - for better or worse - is your fault."

But little Sans knew the Doc too well to expect to get scolded or punished by him judging by the way he was saying this. "okay...and why?"

"Because, little Sans, on your rigorous search for Alphys, what do you remember yourself and Undyne doing? Remember doing anything in particular that may have humongous long-term consequences? Anything?"

While Sans scratched his skull and thought about it, the Doc slowly began drawing a pentagram at the top of the chalkboard. "nope. nothin' comes to mind."

"All right." Does the name 'Rosenberg' strike you as familiar?" Sans did feel a little caught upon hearing that name. Mrs. Rosenberg was a philanthropist whom he and Undyne suspected to be behind Alphys disappearing. She wasn't, but she was far from an innocent angel anyway. "On your little visit to Mrs. Rosenberg's mansion, do you recall meeting someone? Someone unusual? Someone who may have stood out quite a bit?"

He had a bad feeling about where this was going. "you talkin' about the Boss Monster?"

"You're damn right I'm talking about the Boss Monster. Did you never notice the glaring, obvious black pentagram on his chest?" When he sent Undyne to break into Mrs. Rosenberg's place, she discovered a Boss Monster chained to a bed in a dungeon. With statues of him in halls all around the dungeon.

"yea that kinda rings a bell. you sayin' he was the real deal? how'd you call'im? bascinet?"

"Baphomet! Baphomet! You see, all the way back, when our human and the prince faced off for the last time and the prince was persuaded to free all Monsters by removing the barrier, he unleashed the ancient gods of the Elves - every one of them a Boss Monster - upon the world. Luckily for everyone involved, the only one of them that bothered to venture onto the surface was Baphomet himself. Who first wound up living in Valerie Rosenberg's Mansion. All the more our luck, of all the creatures an Elf was paranoid enough to turn on him and keep him prisoner, at least for as long as he would let her. Then, in one unfortunate timeline, Captain Undyne would barge into that mansion, give him an occasion to stray from the masochistic prison he was keeping himself in and head back Underground to tell his fellow Elfish gods about what the surface has to offer now. In the future of that particular timeline, that led to the gods of the Elves heading to the surface, enacting a political purge of unforeseen proportions, combined with an immediate transfer of global control, from the hands of Elfish Archons and philanthropists, back into the hands of the gods that they worship." By the time he was finished, he also used both boards on the wall to outline a circle that spanned almost the entirety of it and drew two simplified caricatures of a hunched-forward Elf, one with locks hanging off the sides of his head, one with a tie hanging off his neck and an arrow that pointed at the enormous circle he was drawing, at the top of which was the pentagram with it's central point pointing downwards like it did with the Boss Monster they were talking about.

"That timeline was interrupted to make way for new ones, but even in the new, third state of the Universe, where practically everything else changes, this change reasserted itself and in your absence, one of Mrs. Rosenberg's employees ended up giving Baphomet that one push he needed to figure that pure self-indulgence in his personal sex-dungeon wouldn't be enough for him. By now, he has already returned another time, brought another one up here and taken him overseas, after bringing two of his friends to the surface last time. I am going to go into the others, but for now, this is the point where we get to the first two that joined him all those years ago. The parents of his best friend Ashtoch. The loss of their son hit them so strongly, they never really recovered from it and it has shaped their behaviour forever. They never forgave humanity for the Pharaoh's decision to end his life even to this day, after more than four thousand years."

"sheesh. talk about being resentful."

"Indeed." Within the outer part of the circle, to the left of the pentagram, Wingdings drew a six-pointed star consisting of two overlapping triangles. "For a start, we have Moloch, the Walking Cauldron. The points of the star make up the rough outline of his head, similar to Baphomet with his symbol." He pointed at the pentagram before moving on. "The natural element that informs the nature of all Moloch's magic attacks, is fire. He has his title from his element and his...erratic temperament. Getting expelled from his home city and traveling the desert with Baphomet surely didn't help him get over Ashtoch's loss, so he tried to distract himself from it at first. The Exiles they traveled around with, dark-skinned Elves with violent urges too incompatible for the humans, Monsters and sand Elves that lived in the city, would raid and burn down any village or town they came across and a lot of the spoils would go to the Boss Monsters they ended up worshipping. Yes. Worshipping. You see, since they didn't have much contact with Monsters outside of barely magically adept villagers, Baphomet's water magic seemed like conjuring up miracles for them, which he used to found an entire cult around himself and later enlist other Boss Monsters to join the pantheon he was forming. Among the first spoils Moloch found, were incenses, which is why he decided to delve into those as a distraction from the loss of his son. Soon enough, by indulging in the smell of burnt incense of various kinds, he began developing ones of his own, until he wound up forging a special oven, an altar to his own likeness with a separate chamber for every ingredient. The ingredients he found himself enjoying the most, were of course fresh corpses. Just to name a few, a lamb, a dove and a human infant make up three of the ingredients that all need to be burned alive and together to create that particular incense he enjoys the most."

"Part of why he quickly developed a reputation for having a particularly explosive personality, is that on their raids, he would throw fits of rage that nobody could explain. It took a long time until they figured out why. It took that long because every time he had one of his fits, he burned the reason why, to a crisp. You see, he was - no - is - well aware that the decision that could have been Baphomet's and Ashtoch's mere eviction from their shining city, but was finally made to be Ashtoch's execution, was guided in that exact direction by an acquaintance of him. A Monster like himself. A frog, now only a faint memory. Any remote likeness to him, any image of a humanoid, green frog, makes him explode with rage in a way that nobody can contain. All it took, even back then, was for the raids of the Exiles - somewhere - to contain a papyrus scroll with a drawn image of a frog Monster. That was all it took, and he would burst out with rage in a way that nobody could control. No-one. Not even his wife."

With this, he went on to draw another symbol. A simplistic likeness to a blooming tree. "Which brings us to Ashtoreth, the Galemother. While Ashtoreth doesn't have the same problem as Moloch, she was left stunted by Ashtoch's loss as well. Her natural element is that of wind, but her skillset isn't in the area of combat, she leaves that to her husband. Instead, she developed a habit of going after emotionally vulnerable people, grooming them both mentally and sexually - to do her bidding and fostering resentment for people who never really wronged them. In the course of the millennia, she has perfected this art and taught it to female Elves, who apply it even now in form of identity-driven movements that are - to the core of their essence - nothing more than Elfish tools and attack vectors, in which the members are fully subservient to them while convincing themselves simultaneously, that they're against any form of servitude or submission. You could say that Ashtoreth is the mother of all anti-human identitarian groups ranging from women's rights, to movements demanding special rights and privileges for the sexually depraved, even including identitarian groups for Orcs or Naga. She founded the schools of thought that - thousands of years later - would lead into all those vectors for enlisting the undesirables in a struggle against humans - and against us."

"These three, much like the rest of the Elfish gods, have one major advantage over every enemy that was met before. They aren't a genuine threat to the universe as a whole the way Chara was, the Temmies can swoop in and guide us from here on in if they need to, but they do have something she didn't. Or rather, they have it to a larger extent. LOVE. They have spent thousands of years killing people in raw amounts. Each and every one of them has amassed so much EXP, that their LOVE protects them against any and all attacks. They can die in theory, but they cannot be killed. Regardless of what kind of attack you launch at them, whether you're striking them with a sword, shooting them with a gun, hitting them with an explosive rocket or dropping an atomic bomb with them in the centre of the explosion, so long as any and all attacks are made with intent to harm them, their LOVE renders them immune to it."

"i'm guessin where you're goin' with this is that we need to get rid of them. for good that is. how if they can't die?"

"I said you can't kill them. I never said they can't die."

* * *

"SUCH INFURIATING IMBECILES! HOW DARE THEY!" In the main park in the capital of the Kadmoan Federation, surrounded by artfully designed skyscrapers, pillars of fire shot out of the ground and lit all the trees and a nearby food stand ablaze. "I WILL BURN EVERY ONE OF THEM!" The cause of it were three Boss Monsters who stood at the centre of it. Specifically, one of the three. A tall and broad creature with big horns, an impressive black mane and beard, woven into three pointy ends at the front, and clad in black armour with a black cape. "UNTIL ALL THAT IS LEFT IS THEIR ASHES!" He was screaming at a cell phone, which a significantly smaller and visibly younger one, a sleek man with no mane and shorter horns, barely dressed beyond underpants and with a black pentagram on his chest, was trying to wrestle out of his hand. "NONE WILL SURVIVE! NONE WILL SURVIVE!" His roars were loud enough, even over the background noise of cars and planes, he would be heard down all the streets that led out of this park.

Human bystanders had fled and they could already hear the sirens that announced impending trouble. The shorter Monster tried to take away the phone with growing desperation. "I think that's been enough internet for today. Just. Give. Me. That. Why. Don't you! Moley! Let go of the phone!" A female Boss Monster the age of the screaming one was floating from tree to tree, stretching her arms towards it and where she did, the fires were extinguished. She herself didn't know the exact details of how she did it, but with a glimpse in the understanding humans had by that point, Baphomet, the young man among the three, could guess that she was pulling away all the oxygen needed for the fire to continue. She was only able to do this to a limited degree and unless Moloch stopped starting new fires, she would never be done. His problem in the moment was that the grip of Moloch was stronger than what he could do to force it open. And he had an idea of what was enraging him, seeing as that was happening for a while now. Humans discovered Moloch's online profiles that Baph had made for him and were sending him messages with images of frogs.

He tried and tried and tried to take away that phone, but he never made it by the time various white-green coloured cars with blue and red lights on top of them stopped in front of them. Out of all of them, men in uniforms left and began drawing firearms to point at them. "YOU!" Still in his angry state, the larger Boss Monster pointed at the policemen, let go of the phone and summoned a trident before beginning to engulf every one of them in flames, burning them all alive. All while a few of them tried firing at him - with the obvious lack of a result you got when you fired at a god. Barely any of them made a dent in his armour, but even any that reached his body, bounced off of him as if they were much slower and made of rubber.

The moment he let go of the phone, Baphomet picked it up and hasted over to the woman among the three. "Ashie! Ashie, he let go of it!" The woman among them, a Boss Monster still taller and broader than Baphomet, but with much shorter, barely visible horns, lowered herself until she stood on the ground and took the phone to put it in a bag she was carrying. She wore a robe Baphomet had someone tailor for her on his time on the surface, knowing her measurements off by heart. The robe was light blue, with white oval in the front to make visible the light blue six-pointed star at it's centre. It's basic design was made in reference to the robes the Royal family used, but he could figure she would want a more revealing or accentuating robe sooner or later.

Once that was done, he turned to the side of the park opposite to Moloch, where another row of police cars had stopped with officers approaching them. One of them even used a megaphone to be clearly audible while staying at a safe distance. "Keep your hands where I can see them!"

Baphomet relaxed and calmly walked closer with his hands half-way in a casual shrug. "Hey, guys! I'm unarmed." He was presenting himself to them with barely anything on and his hands exactly where they could see them. "I can't hurt you. I don't know what you're worried about." It didn't work though, seeing as every officer that had one of those super-fast glorified crossbows was releasing and preparing to fire.

"We know about your 'magic'!", the woman with the megaphone answered. "Now put your hands in the air and keep them there."

Baphomet sighed. "I didn't want to get myself all messy before we go to the conference." Ah well. He leapt forward and stretched his hand out towards them. Some screamed, some gasped with the waning strength of their voices, but they all began to 'dry'. Their skin shriveled up and every one of them lost all the strength in their bodies as their insides turned more and more brittle as more and more of the water in their bodies was drained to form one big bubble of water, floating above the collapsing husks that fell to the ground. He didn't drain all their water, just enough to kill them, before he released the bubble and let it splash on the road of the park. Once more he shrugged and turned around to head back to Moloch, who had calmed down after incinerating that other line of officers. "Well, it's not like they had no idea what they were in for. They knew about our magic after all." With all the fires put out and the cars standing empty next to all the dead officers they brought here, the three cervine insurgents quietly made their way to a place with less commotion. And now wise enough not trust Moloch with a cell phone again.

Now a lot more impatient, Ashtoreth pulled out Baphomet's phone. "If you would please seek out where that conference is so we can get going. I'd rather not wait and run into more distractions." Baphomet rolled his eyes, walked past her, took the phone out of her hand and opened a map application on it. They were nearly there. But they hurried to shake the police, as they already heard a helicopter in the distance and Baphomet could figure out that it was looking for them. It was weird to him, but it made sense. Anywhere else, he was used to the police just letting you when you went on a murderous rampage as a Monster. As long as you weren't human, they wouldn't get involved. That was different here. Here, Moloch hadn't even killed anyone yet, just caused a commotion and the cars were already rolling in. A sign that this was indeed the capital. Where government officials were actually under threat, the cops were quick to enforce the law again when everywhere else, it was more of a humans-only community guideline.

They tried to just outspurt it, but the helicopter eventually caught wind of where they were. Either an officer spotted them, or there were cameras all over the place. Seeing as where they were, it was probably the latter. A turret mounted on it aimed at them and someone was telling them through a loudspeaker to stay put. They did as told and put their hands in the air. The young man among them though, couldn't help himself. Water covering the roads and the outside walls of the buildings surrounding them, slowly gathered up above the helicopter, where he assessed that the pilot couldn't be looking. He gathered water from further and further around, even from the clouds in the sky, until it formed big enough a cone that he could - with one swing - have it bury its way through the police chopper and force it to crash on the street, shaking the ground, breaking through the concrete and pulling a hydrant off it's base which unleashing a small but unending torrent of water. The bodies of it's pilot and it's gunner, ripped apart or crushed under the weight of a cone of solid ice bigger than the vehicle they were in, were swiftly made to cough up blood and suffocate and slowly, Baphomet walked up to the cockpit and noticed that there was still noise coming out of the wireless set that dangled off the mostly empty belt on one side of the ice that filled out most of the broken vehicle. He picked it up, tried pressing a conspicuous button and speaking into it. "Hello there, test test? This is heli oh-one?" He was just improvising, he had no idea what he was doing.

Upon letting go of it, he indeed got a response. Or at least he assumed it was one. "Bannon? Is that you? Do you copy?"

He pressed it again and spoke into the receiver, giving the human that was in the middle of where the ice cone pierced the chopper - or rather the half of his head he could see a good look. "Yeah, I think Bannon's beyond saving at this point. Completely ripped in half. He ain't coming back." The man on the other end was shocked enough to be at a loss of words. "Yeah, listen you guys. You can keep chasing us if you like, but you're really only sending people into a meatgrinder. Hey, how's this? You guys leave us alone and anyone we come by - pedestrians, store staff, all of that, we leave alone. Sound like a deal?" There was no response. "I'd say it's a bargain. Think about it." After that, he left the helicopter and joined the other two Boss Monsters again.

Surprisingly enough, they were met with little to no resistance on the way to their destination. It was quite a comfortable stroll. They even actually did come by some passer-bys that didn't immediately run for their lives at the mere sight of three large, cervine creatures. Their destination was a building almost as big as the colossal structure that served as an office for the spoiled folks that ran this whole continent, with an extravagantly decorated dome at it's top. A publicly owned building that would serve as the location for this year's very early Malersburg Conference. A conference where philanthropists, bankers, investors and others gathered. Everyone who was anyone among - not politicians - but those that truly ran the world, the people that controlled the money, even with some traveling Archons thrown into the mix, would gather here to discuss how to go about what they did for the following year. It was behind tight security. Every year, they would hire an IT team to develop a completely new operating system, only to use that on any computers in that one particular year. Heavily armed guards lined all entrances and no-one was allowed in who wasn't invited. It didn't matter who you were, whether you were a businessman, a national representative, the President or Prime Minister of a country or even a member of the Kadmoan Federal Commission. You were nothing to them unless you were part of the club that was invited.

And rumours - or rather more than just rumours, inofficial public knowledge was that all attendants were Elves. The age-old servants of the three Boss Monsters that now wandered the surface once more. Perfect for them to take their place at the very top of this world's social order. And Valerie had given Baphomet a good idea of how things worked around here. By the end of this, once they asserted their place as the rulers of the Elves again, what would the king of Monsters be to Baphomet? He'd be the boss of Asgore's boss. One way or another, he was gonna call the shots.

At one of the entrances, four Orcs were standing guard. They were wearing pieces of that kind of green modern armour humans of this time seemed to insist on wearing, that left so many places unprotected. Each of them was holding a two-handed firearm and had a pistol strapped to their vest, along with a few gadgets, probably for melee combat and communication. Upon seeing Moloch's even larger frame, they pointed their weapons at them. Baphomet took a step forward and threw up his hands to diffuse the situation. "Hey, hey, simmer down you guys. Nothing to worry about. We're just three nice chaps who'd like to attend your party. Nothing to get all worked up about."

They didn't move an inch, but upon noticing that the three of them were still coming closer, someone else came through the tented tunnel that led from the building onto the street. It was an Elf, shorter than Baphomet, dressed in a suit and holding a tablet computer. Baphomet was impressed at how without any magic, they were able to make these small, thin devices capable of all kinds of tasks. "Pardon my error if I made one." The elf walked to the side to place his device on a pedestal that allowed him to more comfortably operate it. He swiped and tipped away at his computer, until he seemed to scroll through some long list. "I wasn't aware he had some unusual - I mean surprising guests. May I have a name?"

The branded god took step back, slightly tilted his head with a smug expression and placed his hands on both sides of his waist. "Baphomet, the branded god. And these are my two friends, Ashtoreth the Galemother and Moloch the Walking Cauldron." He pointed at both other Monsters with his thumbs and nodded confidently. "Pretty sure we're kinda famous around here." Upon introducing himself, the Elf gave him a look with only half-open eyes that took him a second to discern. If he didn't know any better, it was a degree of disbelief so large, it went way into him being convinced he was being played some cartoonish prank.

He also noticed a shift in the guest host's facial features. He began pretending to scroll up and down that list. "I'm sorry, but I can't find those names on the guest list. Are you sure you were invited?" He seriously believed they were playing a prank on him and now was playing along with it.

Moloch was losing his patience and came closer. The Orcs pointed their weapons at him, but stayed put. His deep voice, even when talking calmly, had a strength to it that intimidated even the most self-confident thugs that anyone could hire. "What is this insolence, servant? Do you have the gall to show such disrespect in my presence?" Only when he summoned his trident and came within a few metres of a range from the Elf, did the Orcs first release their weapons, then, when he kept going, pulled the triggers and fired a burst of shots at him. When they did, the Boss Monster froze. He inspected his armour and was all the more upset when he spotted a tiny, barely visible dent one of the bullets had put into his shoulderpiece. Through the corners of his fuzzy mouth and past his fangflaps, he flashed his gritted teeth and turned around to the Orc that must have fired it. The guard was startled and began firing all the more at him, none of his shots causing any damage, even to the hand-forged armour the approaching Boss Monster was wearing. By the time he was in arm's reach, the Orc had taken one device off his vest and was trying to tase the ancient god, just before Moloch grabbed him by the neck and lifted him off the ground. Any further shots from the other guards proved useless and before their eyes, the Orc in the Boss Monster's grip was being burned alive.

The Elf was paralyzed with fear, and Baphomet took up the opportunity to walk closer, lean on the pedestal with one elbow, and cover his mouth towards the side opposite to the Elf to whisper to him. "He's...kinda easy to provoke. It's probably best if you made an exception with us." By the time Moloch was done and dropped the charred body on the ground, the less overwhelmingly large goat man took his hand away and practically shouted. "Hey Moley, I think our little problem just solved itself." He flashed an evil grin at the Elf. "So? Did it?"

* * *

The inside of the hall was very different from what the ancient gods expected. They were looking forward to dark halls with statues in their image, piles of human bodies made to sacrifice in their name and crowds of Elves dressed in robes. They expected something much more...occult than what they found. Instead it was a brightly illuminated hall. To all sides were several levels of office space and at the centre was a fountain, mounted by a statue of an Elf with a cane that was probably not even of any meaningful significance. And the hall was filled with towers of electronics, several yard tall and wide flat screens tilted slightly downwards to comfortably read their contents from below, displaying a wide variety of lists filled with numbers, relating to stocks, digital- and cryptocurrency, derivatives and all sorts of financial packages. Here and there, there were tables between them and the place was littered with Elves talking to each other or making calculations on sheets of paper or pieces of electronic hardware of their own.

That was, until the three of them drew everyone's attention. Baphomet tried his best at reminding the two others not to make a scene. At least moreso than they were going to unavoidably make already. They already weren't dressed for the occasion. All the attendants here were wearing suits of some kind, but the three of them wearing a robe, a suit of armor and Baphomet wasn't really wearing anything at all. "Now guys, I'll need you to stay very calm, everyone we meet here is a big deal in some wa...woops." The moment they did draw attention, several Elves in slender uniforms were already pointing more guns at them. "That's one way to say welcome I guess." Going along with Baphomet's example, Ashie raised her hands. Moloch didn't follow up on that and remained still, waiting to see where things were going.

From the groups of people that were turning silent upon noticing the three out-of-place creatures, one bearded man came closer. he wore a black suit with a tie. His head was covered by a top hat, two brown, curled locks of hair hung down both sides of his head and he supported every step with a cane. "What is this? Who allowed these lessers to enter?" Judging by his hairstyle and his choice of clothing an Archon, a religious leader of the Elfish community. Some things never changed, not unless you made them change. The three of them had a bone to pick with the Archons, but that was for another time. On the other side of several walls of electronics and screens that covered most of the hall from their viewpoint, it appeared rows of chairs and a screen were prepared for presentations that were to follow later on. From there, quite a few more came forward to see the strange creatures that had entered the building. "Who permitted you to just waltz in here like this?"

"That would be the guy at the reception." In an attempt to look gracious, Baphomet stepped forward on the tips of his paws and made a theatrical gesture presenting the other two. "Allow us to introduce ourselves. I am Baphomet. And yes. THE Baphomet. The one and only. The real deal. I'm back. We all are. And you guys better start believing it." Half-way dancing, he made his way to the Archon. "You'd best start getting in line." Once close enough he bent to the side and once again, exaggeratingly covered the side of his mouth to whisper to the Archon. "But seriously, Moley's pretty cross with you guys. You better not upset him."

The Archon was utterly unimpressed. And he didn't look amused either. "What is it with these awful jokes about occult deities? Who do you think you are?"

Was this guy serious? How could a man of faith from people like them try so hard at pretending not to know. The young Boss Monster was growing confused...and impatient. "I just told you. Hello? Baphomet? Blood god? Branded god? Ring any bells?" Almost childishly, he shook his open hands and looked around to get a read on the facial expressions on the people around him. "No? Nobody? Okay. While we're at forgetting your basics, what is all this? Computers? Numbers? Banking? What happened to Elves having fun? You know looking back, Val was a lot more fun than you guys, this is just sad. Where's the bodies? Where's the blood? Where's the altars? I want some good altars. They really need to capture my good side." He began circling his chest, pointing around the star that was burnt onto his fur. "And...you know...this."

"Security!" Upon hearing that the Archon was STILL not playing along, the liveliness in Baphomet's expression quickly faded. "Escort this pe..." Mid-sentence, the Archon began to wheeze and struggle for air. In part to not fall over, in part by some invisible force, he stumbled with his back onto a processing tower behind him. Baphomet stared at him with his head lowered, but his eyes fixating him through his half-open eye-lids. Under the Archon's clothes, his chest was bulging out in unhealthy-looking ways, until it burst open, ripping apart his shirt. The security personnel began pulling the triggers, each one firing several shots at him. With all of them just bouncing off of him.

The branded god rolled his eyes. "Shooting a god? You should know better." He stepped closer towards the dying man. He was now realizing that this invisible force must have somehow come from him. With the strength he could muster, he failed at talking, but he did mouth the word 'how' at the god who could only smile at that. "How? I control the water. You guys are basically nothing else." His fur already had caught drops of the man's blood, but his hand would soon all the more be coated in it, when Baphomet reached into the Archon's open chest. Inside, organs shifted aside by an invisible hand, making way so he could grab and tear out his spleen. While the security guards were still running towards him, he took a bite off of it but spit it out after getting a taste of it. "Eww, what in the world do you guys eat nowadays?" But he didn't have time for anything beyond that, since the security guards had already arrived and were grabbing his arms to restrain him, one each. "Really, guys? Really? I mean you just saw what I did to that guy. And I wasn't even touching him." The moment he said that, both the guards were wheezing and moving about similarly to the Archon. Their chests twisted until theirs two burst out of their uniforms and their innards began ripping themselves out of their bodies, forming chains of dripping organs floating through the air above them in artful patterns. A routine Baphomet had been practising and perfecting for a long, long time now. The bodies of the two guards collapsed and allowed him to shake them off and after a few seconds of the dancing-organ-routine, he raised his hand, made a gripping gesture, and all the innards exploded, further splattering blood and their contents on the attendants which drew a gasp from them. The branded god sighed, gave all the now terrified faces around another glance and then made a decision. "You know what? Moley!" He turned around to Moloch. "Moley, they cer..."

He was interrupted when a few Elves up above came back with a turret they had mounted on the railing aimed down at him and began firing. He simply waited out the entire thing, all the bullets that bounced off of him and began covering the floor. "So you just thought bigger bullets would work when smaller ones did absolutely nothing? Ugh, who cares. Moley. I take everything back. Say and do whatever you like. They certainly don't care." He pointed at the attendants with his thumb and then shrugged while stepping back in line with Ashie. "So why should I? The stage is yours."

The fearsome juggernaut that was Moloch brushed aside a bit of his mane that was hanging over his face, adjusted his black cape, summoned a trident and upon stepping forward, knocked it's base onto the floor to draw attention. While he did, one of the suits was trying to rush past them and make for the exit. He was doused in flames immediately. "Kneel." He simply told him. The elf, while struggling with the fire, hesitated, tried to move on, and eventually began to kneel just before he gave in and the disappearing flames revealed an already dead body. Once they had been shown that running past him - or away - wasn't going to work, he took another step forward. "I have returned.", he announced. "The walking cauldron has returned to the surface." He knocked the base of his trident against the floor again. "And demands that you kneel!" Terrified, but still confused, the Elfish attendants exchanged quizzical looks with one another. "Kneel!" Covering the entire area of the ground floor, a giant spiral of fire began covering the ceiling and moving downwards towards them. "Kneel!" The few that noticed, hesitated for a bit, but began kneeling. The rest weren't so sure and were instead subtly eyeing a few more security guards that brought another turret to fire at him from above. Moloch didn't even bother acknowledging it, he stayed focused on the assembled crowds and assessing whether they were kneeling to his satisfaction. They weren't. Too many were still banking on human weaponry killing him.

Upon seeing the furious stare his expression had become, Baphomet turned around to the attendants, pointed at him and grinned. "You guys really screwed up now. Shoulda listened when you had the chance."

When the spiral of flame that covered the room, was reaching the walls of electronics that towered only slightly above the Elves they were set up for, he began roaring loud enough for his voice to echo towards every corner of the building. "KNEEL! KNEEL BEFORE MOLOCH!"

The fire was getting dangerously close to the crowds, almost all of which were kneeling when they came close enough to sear them if they didn't. Baphomet was getting worried that Moloch was taking this a little too far. "Say, I think they learned their lesson. You can stop now."

But the Walking Cauldron showed no sign of intending to stop. "NO! They hesitate too much and only submit when their life is in immediate peril! These are not devout followers, they are scared rats! This does not satisfy me! They do not deserve to live! All they deserve is FIRE!" With another burst of rage, Moloch raised both arms and the flames that first only covered one floor, were expanding and growing, filling the entire hall, even the upper levels. And it never ended. The spiral remained, but it was only the source of the never ending, forever growing swaths of flames that stretched themselves out enough to fill the upper levels, the corridors in the outer staircases, it filled everything. Pieces of paint were splintering off the walls and burning up, all paper went up in flames immediately. Here and there, pieces of electronics exploded. What ammunition security had left, they were unloading on the three of them, before the fire boiled their bodies too much for them to survive. Moloch's power was burning everyone in the entire building alive, the torrents were even strong enough to break through the glass dome above the floor, as Baphomet could notice from pieces of glass falling down along with the ceiling where it did.

When Baphomet found himself needing to dodge some incoming bits and pieces from the unstable ceiling, he grabbed Moloch by the shoulderpieces and began shaking him. "Moley! Snap out of it, man! This whole place is coming down."

"Not until I am sure, THAT EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM LIES IN ASHES!"

Finally, Ashtoreth took action. She followed Baphomet's example, placed a hand on Moloch's shoulder and whispered something in his ear. The moment she did that, he actually did snap out of it. He said nothing, but the sudden stern and reserved look on his face made it clear that she had gotten through to him. As soon as they could count on him coming with them, the three Boss Monsters made for the exit. On the way outside, they encountered more, now heavily alarmed security guards. The Orcs in vests and camouflage from before. They opened fire, now with reloaded guns, and were simply ignored as the ancient gods of the Elves made their way outside and back onto the streets of the city. The building was still on fire, but by the end of it, all they left behind was a crumbling ruin. The Malersburg conference had come to a sudden halt. Every family who's money steered the grand scheme of things had lost at least someone to the wrath of the very same gods they worshipped.

What followed was another long trek through the city, riddled with repetitions of taking down helicopters and even tanks with giant blocks of ice, burning entire crowds of law enforcement alive or turning them into puddles of blood. After more than two hours, they came across an empty storehouse that they could slip into without being followed. "Sooo about what happened at the conference."

Moloch didn't need to say a word. His wife gave the younger Monster the scolding for him. "You promised us an easy path to assuming control. And you could not keep it. We will now proceed as we see fit. Darling, shall we be on our leave?" Moloch didn't answer, but he didn't reject her proposition either. He got back up after sitting down and relaxing on a table and followed the other two outside. They made their way back to the airport they came here through. Even though their way here from the airport was a lot less riddled with corpses. Most people just thought they were regular Boss Monsters. This time, upon stepping into the main hall, loudspeakers announced their presence and urged travelers to evacuate it. More security came their way and - without taking into account the countless that tried it before them, attempted to stop or even kill them. The people on the airstrip must have been assuming that security could deal with them, as after the three of them leapt out of one of the tunnels that led out of the terminals onto the airstrip, several planes were still there and the staff was - while in a hurry - still loading planes with cargo.

In particular, they took interest in one that was a bit further off. They hijacked two vehicles sped towards it and got off. Baphomet made sure to arrive first and stop any staff that was trying to hurry things up right in their tracks. As soon as he was close enough, the employees' bodies betrayed them. Under severe pain, they were forced to sit down and wait as he came closer and tapped the inside wall of the cargo bay a few times. "So, this place heading to Heberia?" The only part of their body he wasn't forcibly keeping in place, was their neck and their head, which the two humans he caught used to nod. Nice. He had thought they would, because a plane that looked just like that one was headed to the same place when they first arrived here. "Sweet! Count us in. Hey Moley!" He shouted back at the other two that were coming closer. "I got us a ride!" Once they got on board, all they had to do was hold the staff hostage, force them to pretend that all was well when communicating with ground control, and before too long, they were off in a plane big enough to hold even a big and burly guy like Moloch, towards the Elven homeland in the desert.


	60. The Grim Reaper

.

The Rise of an Angel

Chapter 03

The Grim Reaper

* * *

"Prophesies, tales, legends, myths. A lot of stories now shrouded in mystery are incomplete or failed re-tellings of things that actually happened or people that really existed. Sometimes, time travel causes them to be told in the wrong order, but that doesn't take away from their truthfulness."

* * *

In a comfortable single-family house in a rural village, on a cloudy afternoon, when the wind carried with it the tales of tiny grassland creatures wandering about, when only few birds could be heard announcing that they hadn't flown south and yet the flowers bloomed in the bright colours and the overwhelming saturation only Dreemurr gardening could make possible, at a time when everything else was covered in nigh-melting snow. On a day like this, one child like Asgore's adopted son, was sitting around at home, and thus counter to the king's expectation, was nowhere to be found. Nowhere where he expected to find him at least. The king made his rounds through the village as he so often did. He passed by the park, the playground - usually, after school, even in a weather like this, the child couldn't resist asking Tori to let him play with his fellow human children. But on this day, he was simply not where he usually was. Until he passed by the little sports place he would sometimes meet the other human children at, other things were on the king's mind, but now, he began to worry.

When - well, when a few confusing things happened in the weeks that led up to last Christmas - things he would rather not think about, wounds were opened that he preferred to keep closed, and he and Tori had put any past differences aside and moved together again overnight. In fact, doing so felt like these wounds had never before healed properly and were finally beginning to. And judging by what impressions Asgore got, saying the child approved of it would have been an understatement. Even if only with a human fill-in for a child, it felt like they were a whole family again. They partook in the human iterations of all seasonal festivities the surface engaged in. The correct iterations that was. Monsters often tried to mimic the holidays of humans, but there was only so much detailed information you could gleam from rubbish flooding down a hole the humans possibly didn't know was there. The Dreemurrs - now all proudly bearing the name - tried to check all the boxes the human checked, from decorated trees and gifts at Christmas, handing out candy to the singers on Epiphany day, to setting up scavenger hunts for baskets of chocolate eggs in spring.

And yet, recently, the child was growing so secretive. From time to time, Asgore would catch him absentmindedly stare off outside. Sometimes, he would use the computer, to read pages on some samey websites, the records of which he would later delete with a look on his face. It was a distinct look that wouldn't let the king go. It was hard to decribe what it was. His first impulse was to call it 'guilt', but that didn't quite match it either. It was somewhere between guilt, anxiousness and sadness. The reason it would bother Asgore so much, was because he recognized it only from one specific day, and the only times when the child made that expression, were when it almost seemed like one particular day would come up in conversations. When it did, he and Toriel made sure to avoid it. It was that one, inexplicable day, when Toriel caught him with a fabricated message to the two of them - from his own, real son Asriel himself. And on top of that, a talking flower appeared to taunt Tori and drive her so insane, she burned Asgore's house down in an attempt to burn the flower.

It must have been fabricated. It contained insinuations and outright statements of things Asriel could impossibly have predicted, all those years ago. Yet to make that, Frisk must have known something about him, that Asgore didn't. He must have had his hands on something - some memorabilia, maybe video tapes of him that he could manipulate. They avoided bringing it up, because in it's essence, the message on his phone brought him and Toriel together, and to press him further on it would have been a punishment for something he was ultimately thankful for happening. But he couldn't help but think about it. What did he know? That expression he had when he was secretive, it drove Asgore mad from how anxious it made him. What could he possibly know or have on Asriel, that he himself didn't know about?

When he came home, he heard something. The child was alone in his room, but he was talking. His voice was lowered enough that someone with regular human hearing couldn't have heard him, and the moment he heard Asgore open the door, he stopped. He was keeping something to himself again. In hopes of scavenging an idea, Asgore seized the moment. He refilled his watering can and went through the door. Carefully, he pulled it far enough that you could 'hear' it closing, without fully closing it. After a moment, slowly and carefully, he pulled it open again. The child was motionless, but after a few seconds, he moved about. He sat down at the end of his bed, Asgore could hear his knees place themselves on the ground. He then leaned onto the bed's surface. After taking another moment to reassure himself that Asgore hadn't only left for a second, he finally began to speak anew. "Dear god. I'm not sure if you're out there. I'm sort of getting mixed signals on that. But if you are there - somewhere - if you can hear me, I want you to take a message to the Angel of Death. I don't know how to reach him, so I can't do it on my own. Hello. It's been a while since you came home. I'm getting worried. Mom and Dad are fine. They do nearly everything together now. I'm not sure if I ever see them apart for too long any more. You really worked wonders." That day he kept thinking about! Frisk attributed that day to whoever or whatever this 'Angel of Death' was. What if it was? Which part of it was the Angel? Asriel's message? Was that title a nickname for someone experienced with video editing? Was it the flower?

The child continued wording his message to the Angel. "How is it going? That thing we talked about? Are you getting any further with that? I can't know if you don't come by to tell me. Why don't you come home anyway?" So it was someone he had contact with. Who? He barely spent any time outside without either him or Tori keeping an eye on him from time to time. "Does that thing you're doing occupy you so much? Or is it because of Mo - because of them? Is it because you're afraid of meeting them? Are you afraid of what you'd feel if you saw them the way you are now? Or is it the other way round? Are you afraid of them seeing you? Are you afraid they'll recognize you after all?" He had interrupted himself. Asgore could tell from how he was pronouncing it before he did. He was about to say 'Mom'. He was talking about him and Toriel. What did they have to do with this? "I'm not asking for you to visit every day, I just want something. I want to see that you're okay and I want to know how things were going. That's all I want." If he was talking about the two of them, perhaps he was being vague, just to be sure in case someone overheard it. The moment the child was done, he snuck away and began making another swift circle around the block. Fast enough to not have to worry about someone intruding, but far enough to be able to deny eavesdropping on a solitary prayer.

When he did though, questions roamed his mind. 'Who was this Angel' above all else? It was a title that should strike a chord in the ears of any Monster. Soon enough, he would have his answer. The rest of the day passed in a more regular manner. Toriel came home, they had dinner together, it was as if nothing unusual had happened. Once the child was asleep, he listened intently to make sure he really was. He called up Alphys to see if she knew something. For a moment, it occurred to him that since the Angel could be anyone or anything, she could have been it, but that didn't make any sense upon thinking about it. The child mentioned that he couldn't reach the Angel, but he could visit or call Alphys any time. While keeping himself assured that the child wouldn't walk in on him doing so, he turned on the computer to search for said 'Angel' online. In part, to see how much any Monsters on the surface had put out there publicly about ancient Monster prophesies.

He did find something. An online search led him to a cryptic and rather blandly formatted, website. The content on it's pages - as it's front page explained - were the testimonies of humans who had encountered a being that worked wonders - genuine miracles from curing the incurable to making problems with violent neighbourhoods magically go away, with nobody remembering how, or in some cases, what the problem even was. There was a page dedicated to each testimony, all of them with a photo of the person making it, and sometimes a crude drawing. The reason why there were only drawings and only really childishly drawn ones, was that any pictures taken of the Angel - even only drawings that were a little too accurate, vanished. The stories told of people taking a picture, and upon attempting to looking at if, finding the Angel to have vanished and with him, any photos taken of him. Images drawn by hand on paper disappeared into thin air, right from within the artists' hands. No attempt at capturing and keeping an image of the Angel, ever succeeded.

The pattern of behaviour lined up too well. Asgore could feel - no - he knew, that if he wanted an opportunity to find out what the child knew about Asriel, he had to find this 'Angel'. He looked up the latest testimony the website had. It was already a month old, but it was worth a shot. "Oh goodness, not you too." Toriel was peeking over his shoulder, seeing him read the testimony he was re-reading to be sure to catch everything. He hadn't told her about the child's 'prayer'. And he didn't intend to. Not until he knew more, so he humoured her lack of patience for this. Nonetheless, he made sure to prepare for a journey on the next morning. Before either of the two had gotten up, when the alarm clock was about to ring, he grabbed his wife's hand and pulled at it to draw her attention when she reached for the clock to turn off the alarm. He had her attention, but Toriel sat up and stretched out her arms anyway and yawned. "What is it."

"Tori, I have to head out." He remained rested on his back. He stroked her where she wasn't too far away to keep contact and keep her attention. "I am not sure how long I will be gone."

Still a bit groggy, his wife got up and ready to put on her bath robe. A special bath robe for her, tailored to her size and with the royal colours and the royal crest. One of several christmas gifts he had someone in New Home make at short notice. He had some 'real' ones, too, but he found it to be more or less obligatory to have their reunion honoured in all the little ways that came with their life. Then again, it wasn't like he didn't have one of his own. "Don't tell me you are going out chasing after that 'Angel'." He should have known better than to not expect her to know exactly what he was thinking. She saw the child visit that website and she saw him.

But, it had to be done. With an effort of his own, he got up and made to pick up his own. "I must." With matching bath robes, he watched her leave for the showers. "If a Monster is wandering about, causing this much of a commotion, I cannot afford not to make sure this doesn't come back to haunt us." She didn't answer, but he could see from the look on her face, that the disapproval was waning. What he said was only a pretext. But she didn't know that, and it was enough to persuade her anyway. Eventually, both of them were dressed. But other than her, he was donning his royal attire once more. Complete with his golden suit of armour and his cape. When Tori left with the child to head for school, he stayed at their front door, made sure that it was locked and that he had everything he needed one more time, before he headed over to a long time friend he expected to help with this. He had used his phone to send him a text, but there hadn't been a response since.

Asgore sighed and moved faster, past the inner parts of the village all the way up a particularly steep road along where once uneven fields lay, to the outermost corner of the village, where just opposite from a row of normal-looking houses, stood one of several flat, oval houses. It had a garden, behind it was a swimming pool with a clear view on the currently unused wheat fields. He wasn't greeted when he approached the front door. Wayne was being very peculiar. Again. He rang the bell. At first, nothing happened. When he rang the bell one more time, he heard impatient steps move towards the door. The door was opened and behind it, a very distraught skull with two cracks, one on each eye, glared back at him with a gloom in his eyes and greeted him with a single word: "No."

What? "Pardon?" He didn't know what to say. He hadn't given the cloaked skeleton any details on what he wanted to talk about.

Already in his robe, Dr. Gaster stretched out one arm and pointed straight at Asgore. "No! I'm not coming with you!" He was unsettled. If the king didn't know any better, he would have said he was terrified.

"Wayne, I never told you what it was about."

In part out of comfort and not wanting to squeeze through the narrow doorway, in part out of courtesy as his old friend Brother Wayne seemed rather agitated, he stayed outside, even when Wayne spurted further inside while talking to him without closing the door. "I already know what is going on. And I will NOT get involved in this." When the Doctor came back to the front door, he did with his phone and was dialing a number. "There's a lot of reasons, but for a start, I can't afford to draw Khalif Rasheemi's attention just yet. I need the element of surprise so I can - ah now. Papyrus? Are you awake? Right. Come over here and bring the bus!"

Asgore raised an eyebrow. "Bus?"

His friend had disappeared again. When he came back, he brought two books with him. Both of which he knew and had already read. He knew them because Brother Wayne had written them himself, long ago. 'A comprehensive guide on Monster souls and Monster bodies.' and 'The Sacrilege - a thousand reasons why it should be avoided.' The moment Asgore had everything, the Doctor slammed the doors shut and stormed off to the kitchen. He sighed, filled another cup with tea from his kettle and sat down at his kitchen table. He took a sip from it, but found himself incapable of enjoying it. That was, because he could sense something. Someone. The presence of an extremely powerful entity. And judging by the timing, he immediately knew who it was. "You're right behind me, aren't you?" He grabbed his chair with one hand and turned around. Right in front of him stood a young, male Boss Monster. He wore a robe with the crest of the royal family and the colours that matched it, but with a decorative collar added, to give him a childish 'super villain' look. His dark eyes stared at the Doctor for a few seconds, waiting for him to say something. And Wingdings could already figure what. "Do I really need to accompany him for this?" The image of Asriel Dreemurr continued to stare at him without a word. Rather disgruntled, Wingdings slammed the cup on the table, got up and rushed outside. "Wait! Wait!" With the door closed, he followed Asgore who was already getting into a bus the Doctor had secured to transport him. Unsure about what was going on, Papyrus made way for him when he got into the driver's seat. "Go, go already. I'm driving him."

The confused skeleton left the vehicle and Asgore was relieved to see his friend join him for this trip. Among the flipped-back seats, Asgore ran his hand along the covers of the two books and looked up to the still slightly annoyed Doctor. "It is good to see you change your mind."

Gaster smiled. "Yes." He didn't want to go on this trip for several reasons. For one, he remembered Asriel during the height of his power. Not in his current form, but in distant futures that never were. The armored emperor of mankind. So cruel to anyone who would endanger humans and Monsters, he was known as 'Asriel the Ruthless'. In hindsight, something everyone should have seen coming. If you really looked at the line of succession in the Dreemurr family, Asgore - in the future known as 'Emperor Asgore the Merciful', was the odd one out. Asriel was so cruel, so powerful, even the Doctor was terrified of him. And now, in summer, this same Asriel the Ruthless must have accrued dozens of human souls. He was more powerful now than even his not yet existing imperial future self. Once the doors were closed, Papyrus was long on his way back to where he was before and the Doctor turned the key to get the vehicle running. "Where to, 'your highness'?"

Asgore chuckled and gave him the location they were first heading to. It was probably a good change for the king to leave the village. He barely ever did that at all. Gaster expected that deep down, the king couldn't wait to have a bigger home, something where he could fit a chariot and a Glyde to pull it, so he could fly by the landscapes much faster than any speed they were going to go at on this day. Only that on the surface, he never expected that to happen any time soon. On their way out of Shoneon Village, Asgore opened up the book and cleared his throat. "So Wayne. Tell me. What is the reason for this particular choice in literature? You seem to know about a lot of things ahead of time. How does it relate to souls? Who is this 'Angel' we are looking for?"

Wingdings snapped at his friend with little remorse. "Can't tell."

Asgore didn't let that stop him. He gave the Doctor a pat on the shoulder. "Come now, Wayne. You can tell me."

Once the vehicle settled in from taking a sharp turn, the Doctor shook his head slightly. "I really, really can't."

"For old time's sake."

At last, he sighed. "All right." He had to be vague. "Let's say there's more to how souls work than you're immediately aware of."

"Perhaps a little more than that."

"You wouldn't make sense of it if I outright told you."

The king chuckled. "Try me."

The Doctor, not once looking back, sighed enough for Asgore to see it in the rise and fall of his shoulders. "What if I told you, that a ruler of Monsters has come back from the dead to be at your side when times put you in most need for some advice and some new conviction?"

"I would deem it ominous. What is so dire about the future?"

Gaster took another deep breath. He didn't want to do this, but he did so to get closure from his friend's inquiry. He channeled the words of an emperor from a future that - in this state of the universe - was yet to be created. "Mercy. Mercy is your biggest flaw. Your greatest sin. Instead of granting it to only the innocent and the redeemable, you grant mercy to everyone. You avoided doing a few things that need to be done. You're not the only one there. A lot of people before you showed mercy when they shouldn't have. And now, things are getting so bad, you dragged humanity and the whole world into it. There is a way to cauterize the wound and for it to heal overtime. But first, you need to find him." The Doctor was already planning on putting Sans, Papyrus and Alphys through a quick crash course, summarizing all they needed to know to make sense of everything that happened to them ever since they first left the Underground and everything that was to come. Asgore already knew a lot of the basics, while not being involved in how each detail relates to their immediate situation. At least he knew everything that wouldn't have gotten him worked up. Their journey took them through several villages. All villages around the city to one extent or another were somewhere between aging rural village and suburb. "Now which page did you expect me to start at?"

The reason Gaster was anxious about meeting Asriel, was that Asriel at this point in time was in a state in which he had access to knowledge of things that may happen in the distant future, maybe he knew things Wingdings had done on his travels, but wasn't yet in a position to make sense of it. After all, in his current state, he was still the little child under the many layers that made up the human souls that accompanied him. It was hard for Wingdings to deduce how the prince would react to him. Then again, he had appeared in front of him and the Doctor was still alive. In the outskirts of a larger town, they stopped so the Doctor could refuel. The stench of petrol made him very uncomfortable, but he knew not to complain. Right afterwards, their next destination was the village Asgore wanted to search in. In a sudden motion, the king gasped and slammed one of the two books shut. "What's wrong?" The Doctor wasn't stirred at all by what the king had seen. For a second, in the corner of his eye, he saw a figure float along the window to his right. He leaned to the right to look up to where it was vanishing, but by the time he had his head in position with the confines making it hard to navigate with his horns, it was already gone.

Asgore ran a hand down his face and closed his eyes. "Nothing. I must have been imagining things." He stared down at the book, opened up on a page on what happened to Monsters' souls when they died. Was the Doctor merely playing with him? Could such a thing as someone 'coming back from the dead' happen? As what? A ghost? Ghosts were their own kind of Monster. The figure drawn on the images clearly resembled a Boss Monster, not a ghost. Ghosts didn't have horns.  
"Are you sure nothing's wrong?"

No, after the second time, Asgore was sure, it wasn't just in his mind. He tipped Wayne's solid shoulder. "Did you not see something right next to us?"

He had his attention, but the Doctor didn't seem nearly as shaken up. "No...what am I supposed to see. I spy with my little eye, something that is red."

The Doctor always knew how to make Asgore laugh. Brother Wayne had a habit of being this way. He was referring to the roof of one of the two-story houses in the outskirts of their destination. A village, the one which the latest entry on this 'Angel of Death' related to. He had a habit of being his way. "No, I was serious. I could have sworn I had seen something. Twice."

"Hm...okay. Describe it."

"The Angel from the drawings."

The skeleton nodded. "I see..." He paused, only to play it off with a newfound liveliness. "Sounds like wishful thinking to me. Either way, we're here." He passed a few more crossings until he found an empty parking space that didn't have a parking meter. They both shuddered at the cold. It was late February, and the snow covered the rooftops with no sign of this ending soon. The snow was stuck in a limbo between melting and being frozen, making the pavement hard to not slip over on. It was in the middle of the day, and yet the streets had little commotion to them. If you disregarded the almost seamless stream of cars of course. The cold only made it seem all the more lifeless. Only one human was to be seen, several crossings ahead, with his back turned towards the two of them, and soon vanished behind one of the rows of buildings that lined the street. Once they were outside and Wingdings was done making sure the minibus' doors were locked, he folded up his arms. "Now what?"

Several moments of dead silence passed. Time that Asgore took to observe his surroundings a little more closely. There was a cafe way, way in the distance. "If the angel has been here, surely there has to be a few locals who have seen him and might know where he went next." He scrambled out the images he had printed out. Copied drawings of the angel that didn't vanish like any photos did. Wingdings walked a few meters down the street to be exactly at the corner where two roads intersected to look for the names of street signs and the numbers of buildings. Just to assure himself of their location. The moment he and Asgore faced in opposite directions, Asgore stopped. A slight cold took hold of him. In the distance, another crossing further inward, he stood. The angel. Just like on the drawing. A Boss Monster. A young man. Two golden irises shone from within his black eyes, straight at the king. He wore a robe, with the royal colours. And what was more, with the Dreemurrs' own family crest. The Delta Rune. The moment the angel was sure, that he had Asgore's attention, he raised his hand, to point in a direction right around the corner from where he stood. "Wa...Wayne!" When he finally stuttered out the Doctor's name, he grabbed the skeleton by the shoulders and forcibly turned him around. But by the time he did, the angel disappeared behind a passing truck and was no longer there when the truck was gone.

"What? What are you on about?" The Doctor was becoming genuinely upset with Asgore.

The Boss Monster, aghast at what was transpiring, was left dumbstruck. "I...I must be going insane..."

"Maybe, maybe not! Talk to me, what is going on?"

Asgore gave Wayne a quick glance, and then grabbed him by the wrist. "Follow me! I could have sworn I had just seen the angel!"

Wingdings suppressed a grin. "Really now? Don't you think that was a little too easy?" Asgore dragged his friend to the crossing right across the street from where the angel stood and waited for the street lights to turn green. The street they hasted to was a lot less busy than the main road, but the sidewalks were just as empty. "All right, you can let go now." Wingdings wrung himself free from the king's grip, but continued to follow him. He was his ride after all. "So you 'saw' the angel. What was he doing? And why can't I see him."

Asgore shook his head. "You can...I think...it is just...he was pointing this way. And when you turned around, he was gone."

They continued wandering straight ahead. Following the lead the angel had given them. They passed several little stores and a bakery, all of which had their blinds down or their curtains closed. The humans were strangely absent. The only human they saw, took a turn a few crossings ahead, like last time. If Asgore didn't know any better, he would have said it wasn't just a calm place. They were being avoided. Businesses that were closed in broad daylight, empty sidewalks on a Saturday noon, something didn't sit well. "If we assume that the angel is real...", The Doctor began. "...what did pointing here accomplish?" After more or less telling him that he knew what was going on, Asgore wasn't sure whether or not Wayne was playing with him. "There would be something to see here, wouldn't it? Something would be conspicuous to draw our attention." And there was something conspicuous indeed. Two crossings ahead from where they were by then, one house stood out. Between all the rows of buildings with splintered-off paint trying and failing to cover them in soft colours of green and orange, there was one much darker than the others. Charred walls and a broken-down balcony told the tale of a house fire. Police tape wrapped around the premises announced that law enforcement was already 'taking care' of it, whatever inaction that entailed. "Now what happened here?"

The building was charred all around. A quick glance inside revealed the upper floor to have broken down and collapsed onto the ground with pieces strewn all around. This wasn't some regular house fire, someone wanted this place burned down. "This is indeed noteworthy. Wait! Wayne! What are you doing?" With little regard for conduct - or rule of law, the Doctor had pulled up the tape and was ducking past it. Very agitated, Asgore stepped to the outer end of the tape and stared at the Doctor. "Come back out here this instant!" Wingdings just raised his hands and tried to calm him down. Asgore kept his voice down, but wouldn't stop. "We can not just step into a crime scene!"

"Calm down. You should know how this works by now. We're Monsters. We're above the law. If the police catch wind a non-human was involved in arson, they won't touch it. Now come on in!" With some newfound confidence, the skeleton pushed down the tape and gestured Asgore to get inside. "Besides, if anything goes wrong, you always have an ace to fall back on right at home." The king sighed and followed him. The door was wide open and even of the few bushes planted in the tiny garden in the front, most were collapsed shells of their former selves.

Each when entering raised a hand to shield themselves in case the already loose door frame would come down. Luckily, it held on. Half-way buried beneath the debris of a collapsed ceiling lay the burnt corpse of a human. Their mouth was still open, and their body was burned so badly, you couldn't even tell whether it was a man or a woman. What little was left of their clothes simply blended in with their blackened skin too well. The police hadn't even bothered to carry out the body. "Did she die in the fire?"

Gaster kneeled down and gave the body a closer look, running along it without directly touching it with his finger. After about a minute, he paused. "I don't think so. Look closely up here..." When Asgore came to the other side of the body and knelt down to see what Wayne was pointing at, he almost immediately saw what the skeleton was referring to. You could barely see it because of how badly she was burned, but there were several wounds at her throat somebody cut her neck open with a knife or a short sword. While Asgore was still taking in what he was beholding, the Doctor pulled a tablet computer out of his sleeve and began opening something. "Hm...let's see what my little program can find about her."

"Who would do such a thing? What...what kind of husband would do such a thing?"

The skeleton swiped down a long list and tipped onto something, apparently to open up something about this woman that he found. As far as a skeleton could, he raised an eyebrow. "None, apparently. She was divorced. Living off a poor sod's paycut, but the man himself doesn't live here."

Without getting back up, the king turned his head the Doctor's way. "Could he have returned to take revenge for it?"

Wingdings continued swiping through whatever information this device was displaying, but he shook his head at Asgore's suggestion. "Would be justified, it's probably what the police will conclude, but it makes no sense. Why would he - as the one person with the best motive and the largest case of probable cause - incriminate himself by committing an obvious murder and then draw attention to it by setting the house on fire?"

A shadow grasped both their spines as a third voice began speaking up from right behind them. None of the two had seen or heard it's source come his way. It was the clear voice of a young man. "You ask the wrong question, Doctor." Both of them spun around to see a Boss Monster eerily similar to the one in the drawings and identical to the one Asgore thought he had imagined, stand right next to them. As before, dressed in a robe with the royal crest and matching colors. "Any human can see the wounds of an obvious murder, and yet none was here to stop you two from entering a warded-off crime scene. Why?" The two exchanged a questioning glance before they faced the Angel again. "Why is no-one here keeping an eye out? Why is the body not in a morgue? Would they not be in the least concerned with you tampering with evidence..." Slowly, Gaster began to raise his head. He had grasped where the Angel was taking this. "...unless it was never their desire to know for sure what happened here."

It took a while, but now, the king's eyes show wide open when he realized the obvious. "Orcs! You mean it wa..." He was shaken all the more when he had to brace himself for what he thought was an incoming attack. But it happened too quickly to do something about it. With a speed he couldn't react to, the stranger raised his hand his way and from one moment to the next, Asgore's surroundings shifted and spun, until found himself in an entirely different place.

He wasn't really here, he tried to look at his hands and found them gone, like everything else. A comfortable cool air permeated the boarded-off inside of a broken house he was in. He could feel a searing heat from outside, in fact the ground between this building and the others he could see through the only doorway outside, was covered in sand. He was somewhere in the desert. His ears felt shattered under the neverending gunfire that came from outside. He was in a warzone somewhere in the desert. He spotted the metal pieces and the wooden door that was once mounted on the outside of the now open entry at the front. And right around the corner from it, something was hiding. A little boy. Trembling, in tears. Lost and hopeless in the middle of a fight between grown men with deadly firearms. The child had tusks. You couldn't really make out it's skin colour in the dark, but it was apparent that it was an Orc child. When the gunfire subsided, someone came closer. A human dressed up in camouflage with strategically placed pieces of kevlar armor as shown to Asgore by William when he was first shown what weapons and armor humans had invented during the Monsters' time in the Underground. A few others followed him and pointed their arms in all directions and explored every corner within seconds with a sense of routine from which he could only surmise that they did this many times out here. "Clear!" One of them shouted and most of them retreated outside. The boy feared for his life the entire time, you could hear him sobbing. One of the soldiers glanced at him to make sure one more time that he wasn't armed and then left the building. But the moment this had happened Asgore felt his mind drawn all the way out of this vision and back to where he was before. Back in the burned-down house with Wayne. No-one had moved an inch from where they were and the Angel took his hand back down.

Calm and collected as always, the Angel began to talk again. "They spared the child. They showed mercy in a time of war." Asgore smiled. The Angel didn't. "So the child grew up and thanked them for this mercy, by coming here and living as a guest with this woman. Back in his home country, he had heard that human women were loose and always willing." He raised his hand once more and conjured up another vision in the king's mind. This time he was right here in this house, in the same room in front of the door. But the door was closed and the house was fine. Everything was clean and tidy. If everything wasn't somehow less colourful, you could have seen the softly-coloured patterns the woman that lived here seemed to have a weakness for. Opposite from the entry door lay the kitchen table, from where a sated Orc was just finishing up a meal his host had cooked for him. The voice of the Angel echoed through Asgore's mind. "Spared out of mercy, taken in out of empathy. Fed out of generosity." The woman herself opened the front door and just came in. There was still some earth left on her hands from planting something outside. When she turned around to wipe her hands, the Orc glanced at her and began to grin. He pushed the table aside and walked up to his unsuspecting host. She gasped upon turning around and seeing him inches away, and he seized the moment in which she was startled by grabbing her by the shoulder and forcibly pushing her to the ground. She began to struggle and ask him what he was doing. He didn't answer, his grin only widened. With a force she had no chance at withstanding, he grabbed her hands and pinned her to the ground. The moment the woman realized what he was about to do to her as he began pulling at her trousers, she started to struggle and beg for him to stop.

"Stop?", the Orc asked with a sudden anger.

"He had come here, because he was told western women were loose.", the Angel's voice interjected while the two on the ground kept struggling.

"What you mean, stop?", the brute shouted at her. As soon as the human woman screamed for help for the first time, the furious Orc snorted, reached down to his trousers and pulled out a short sword he seemed to be carrying around with himself. He pressed it against her neck and her panic faded for a brief time, only to resume not long later. He tried pressing the sword more strongly onto her neck, even pulling at it to deeply cut it, but she wouldn't stop moving. Eventually he readjusted the blade to hold it like a knife and stabbed into her throat several times. Resulting in the stab wounds he had caused. The blood he was spilling ran down her and a lot of it got caught on his shirt. But that didn't stop him from further undressing and then thrusting away at her corpse.

"Cease this!", Asgore tried to shout. "Why are you making me watch this?"

"The mercy of these soldiers had dire consequences for this woman and many others. Sometimes, it isn't entirely clear to someone how dire these can be, unless they see every bit of it." This Orc had murdered this poor woman in cold blood, because she refused to give him his way. She had taken him in, given him food, cooked him meals, all because she felt sorry for him and he thanked her by murdering her and then raping her corpse. He couldn't bear to watch it and yet he had no choice but to do so. "You should be thankful. This man took many more lives than only that of his host. You could be watching all of their deaths. And yet you are only seeing a single one." When the Orc was done, he got up, walked up and down the room thinking about what to do. He couldn't let her live, she would have been a witness to what he was trying to do, but he also couldn't leave her corpse here like that. A more intelligent sociopath might have done something more sophisticated like cutting her body to pieces and disposing of it in a less detectable fashion, or removing traces of everything he had done, or even not leaving behind any traces. But this wasn't an intelligent person, this was a brown person. So the best thing he could think of, was to grab a box of matches from the cupboard and to begin setting the whole house on fire. Time around the Monster King's consciousness began to pass faster and faster. He watched a time lapse of the entire transition from where things took off here, to parts of the ceiling falling off from being too brittle, to the police briefly passing by and wrapping tape around the outline of the property and then promptly leaving again, all the way to him and the Doctor arriving here and taking a look at the body. After that, his eyes shot wide open. The vision had ended.

Still calm and collected, and without a shred of remorse in his eyes, the Angel stared at him. "The same man you watched murder and defile this woman is not only alive. He is on the loose. And he is about to take yet another life in this same town as we speak."

The moment he said this, Asgore and Wayne both braced themselves for combat again. "What? Where?"

"I can lead you to him. In time even. If you hurry that is. He is not far from here." As if pulled by another force, the young man shot right back outside through the front door, but wound up standing upright on the outside pavement as if nothing had happened to him. With little hesitation, both the king and his friend readied their weapons, one a strange device that Wayne attached to his hand, the other a red trident. Both pushed down the tape and stepped over it back outside. The moment they caught up with the Angel, he was gone. It took the king a moment to realize the Angel was using some sort of teleportation to move around and only sped outside before to raise their tension. A lot further down the road, he could see him and ran after his image. He barely caught the figure walk backwards around the corner, never leaving Asgore out of sight until he was gone. When he caught up, the Angel was already standing one crossing further down the street. Two more turns later, the figure led him into a set of narrow alleyways between industrial buildings. Past trash containers and sleeping homeless humans, Asgore sped past them all in a desperate attempt to keep up with the Angel. While he did, the Angel's voice began speaking from within his mind yet again. "You will need to make a choice. The police would not dare arrest an Orc over a rape or a murder. That would be 'racist'. Spare the Orc and he continues to kill. Kill the Orc and the bloodshed ends. Will you grasp this nettle and do what you must, or will you do as those soldiers did and repeat your mistake?"

"Wait!", the king shouted while still running and barely keeping up with his breath. "What do you mean 'my' mistake? I didn't spare the boy, I..." His heart sank and he couldn't help but to stop. He whispered a name he hadn't heard or thought about in a long, long time. Longer even than his banishment. "Tarabi..." He didn't spare this boy. But he spared 'a' boy. And unlike those soldiers, it was him that paid the price. Moreso than him... "Father..." He shook his head and began running after the figure again. He could take his time to ponder this another time. The Angel led him further to an area between industrial buildings and apartment complexes. In one longer alleyway, he finally spotted something new. Two people. One of them was armed with a knife. No. It was too long for a knife. A short sword, like the one he saw in his vision of the past. In an unmatching, makeshift combination of clothes an Orc stood in this corner with a drawn short sword and was threatening a man in his fourties. The human stood with his back to the wall and had little options for an escape.

The Orc shouted at the human. "Money now!" But the moment he saw and heard Asgore head his way, he broke off his interactions with the human and began to make a break for it. This Orc wouldn't let the Monster King catch him so easily. He had to slow him down or else he would escape. Asgore chased him down the alleyway and waited for an opportune moment. When it arrived, he spotted a time when the Orc was about to make his next step with his right foot. He made the pavement break up and move up as an earth magic attack to cause the brute to stumble and fall onto the ground. He slipped for a bit, even on the ground. Asgore must have caused a few scratches and minor wounds just from this. He tried to strafe away from Asgore with what little he had left for strength, but he didn't get far. "Ill Heer An! A Baphomet!" Asgore could tell he was terrifying the Orc with only his presence and his appearance. Asgore stopped and gave the brute a moment to collect himself. Which he didn't do. He was in panic, he began to crawl on his knees and put his hands together. "Baphomet come to take me? Please spare me!" Again with calling him a Baphomet. Any Boss Monsters. Asgore would know a thing or two about the myths surrounding that name. In front of the king's eyes, emerging from within a blur, two orange glowing 'boxes' began to materialize. One to his left, displaying a little trident and the word 'Fight' and one to his right, displaying a cross and the word 'Mercy'. "Ill Heer An! Have Mercy O Baphomet! Please spare! Not my time! Not yet!" The Orc was fixated on Asgore. The boxes must have been invisible to him. This was the Angel's way of signaling to him that this was the time for him to make his choice.

He clenched his hands around the grip of his trident. He trembled. This wasn't easy. Both those previous times he had to show strength were easy. First with K'Tenga, then with his brother and this army of 'Orc rights' activists. It was different with them. They were threatening him and his people. They were threatening to kill everyone he loved. He killed them all, but he did so as a protector of his people. With this Orc right here, it was more difficult. Asgore wasn't here as a protector. He felt much more like he was a judge. He was forced to be judge, jury and executioner, all at the same time. Once he had hesitated for long enough, he finally heard the Angel's voice one more time. "He will continue to kill. Anyone could be next. Any human. Any Goblin. Any Monster." He was right, but this was difficult for him. Chasing down and killing criminals was never a thing he sought out to do as king. If any killing was necessary at all, even among Monsters, he had others cruel enough to do it for him. And before he was king...well...his father certainly never hesitated to track down and take the life of a scoundrel whenever he heard that there was one around. Whenever word came around that there was a thief, a robber, a traitor or even a murderer, his father would soon make sure that their faces were either encased in ice or their bodies impaled on curved spikes of solid earth. Asgore on the other hand, only did so in self-defense. And only when he had to. He just had to pull himself together. Sometimes, lines had to be drawn and other lines had to be crossed to do so. He raised his trident, tossed it into the air, and then guided it towards piercing right through the 'MERCY' box. It was broken and gone. Now, all he needed to do, was to go for the only option. When he was already raising his trident to begin to not show mercy to this Orc, the Angel appeared and pushed his arm down. "Enough. I only wanted to see if you can choose to do it."

Like he did when he was a little boy in a house in the desert, the Orc was sobbing upon looking up at a second 'Baphomet'. This one, the younger one, had much less kindness in his eyes than Asgore had. And that translated into what would follow as well. The Angel swung his hand and summoned a large, red scythe. He took a step back and swung it with both hands. The magic blade, a red summoned one like Asgore's trident, glided through the ground as if it wasn't there, but cut the Orc clean in half. He was still moving, but he wouldn't for long. The Angel dispelled the scythe and raised an open hand. The ground beneath them began to shift. Asgore found himself stumbling backwards as the pavement broke up, raised itself to open up and began wrapping itself over the Orc and smashing itself back into position, thus burying the two halves beneath the concrete.

Except for a little bit of blood peeking out of the left-over nicks in the pavement, it was like the killer had never been there.

None of the two spoke a word. A cold wind blew through the alleyway. Strong enough to howl into the king's ears. He stared at the figure that had made this murderer disappear. "I'm sorry it had to be this way.", the Angel eventually said. He looked back at Asgore, with a cold and reserved look in his eyes. "I share the minds of many humans, all of which can see what this man had done. His death was for the better. He was going to kill over a dozen more times had he not died here today." Humans? This filled the king's mind with worries. So the worst he expected was true. The Angel was a younger Boss Monster had taken the souls of humans and had so many, he could maintain this form. This was why he had this strange, absent look on his face. As if he was staring through Asgore. He wasn't mentally present, with the so many other minds occupying his body. Nonetheless the Angel smiled. "But I am happy to see you are learning. Little by little. You denied yourself the choice to spare the Orc. Your intent to kill him was all I needed to see. It means you might be ready."

Asgore was fixated at the Angel, but this threw him out of the loop. He stopped short for a moment. "Wait, ready? Ready for what?"

The Angel just continued to smile. "Ready to save many more lives." Slowly, he began to float up into the air and glide backwards and away from Asgore. Flying away like a ghost. "I know you're here for answers. Come to this town again tomorrow. Then you will be one step closer to getting your answers."

"Wait! Stop!" Asgore stumbled a few steps forward. He was more calm than he should have during all their interactions. He should have been in panic. But something about this 'Angel' was soothing him. He felt familiar. Somehow. Something about this person felt familiar to him. And now he was vanishing before his eyes and he felt like he was 'losing' him again. The Angel, high up in the air, faded away and left Asgore alone.

Now in more of a spurt rather than a run, Wayne was finally catching up and coming closer. "What did he say?" He undid the locks on the device that attached it to the hole in his hand and put it away. "Did you find out anything?"

Together, they stared up towards where Asgore had last seen the Angel. He was now gone. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and without further ado, turned around to head back to their vehicle. No word was spoken until they were already back, each seated where they had to be and the door closed, so they could move out. "Wayne?" Wingdings was already about to turn the keys and get the car started, but stopped upon hearing the king finally speak up to turn around and face him. "Are you sure there is nothing about this person that you can tell me?"

For a moment there, Wayne looked worried, but then his expression eased up. "I would rather not."

"You said it was a ruler of Monsters who came back from the dead...you must be able to tell me more."

Now more relaxed, Wayne did turn on the motor and begin to get the car away from the improvised parking space it was at. "I'd really, really rather not. You see, during his reign, this ruler isn't exactly known for his mercy." Before long, they were back on the road moving from crossing to crossing to get the car turned around and back en route to Shoneon Village. "I mean he does balance things out and apply mercy where mercy is due, but his reputation, he really got for purging anyone and anything that would cause trouble wherever his reach was, with no remorse whatsoever. I would really rather not get him upset."

"So a person with great power and no hesitation to wield it."

While still keeping an eye on the road, the Doctor nodded. "I assume that makes for an accurate description, yes."

"Who would chase down and kill whoever he deems a threat to the people of his nation..."

"Hitting the nail on the head with that one, no doubt." He made a clear turn to the left and once safely on a roadway straight back home, raised one finger. "Don't get the wrong idea though. He is revered by his people. Not feared. Under his rule, they prosper like they never have before. He is known to be ruthless, but he does what he does to protect his people. So that humans and Monsters can live without having to kill in order to not be killed. He dedicates his efforts entirely to keeping the brutality of life, the merciless struggle for survival, away from Monsters and humans. 'Don't kill and don't be killed' is a common phrase used to describe how he wants humans and Monsters to live."

"And you know so much about him because..."

"Remember when I told you about how I was erased from the universe?"

"Yes?"

"And how I was, because I overused a time machine?"

"Yes?"

"Well, I met him on my travels through time."

"I thought as much."

Asgore just leaned back against the uncomfortable side of the lean of one of the seats and watched the landscapes pass by.


	61. Father and Son

.

Rise of an Angel

Chapter 04

Father and Son

* * *

After having witnessed a long monologue on Elfish deception tactics, Sans, Papyrus and Alphys watched intently as Doctor Gaster wiped the black board of the classroom they met in, to make way for whatever he decided to talk about next. Everything he said, he would accompany with something he drew or wrote on the board, even if it was only something like a doodle of a few genetic base pairs or an infograph with words to map out a more complicated subject matter. "Whether it is actual DNA, or a similar structure present in the bodies of Monsters, every living being has some basic structure that determines their development and with their development, everything both about their body and their mind. Of course, a person's DNA doesn't predetermine their life experiences - well indirectly it does since the people make up the environment that causes them, but directly, it doesn't. But it does determine their behaviour in what they make of these experiences. How do they react to them? What do they take away from each experience? What lessons do they learn from them? What impact does any given experience have on their outlook upon the world. And that is how behaviour is genetically predetermined. Two people with different genetics, who live the exact same lives, will always behave differently by the end of it."

"One way in which this can be important, is that behaviour is inherited, but follows all the rules of modern and future genetics. A given behavioural phenotype can be present in one specimen, but dormant their immediate offspring, either because another component is suppressing the sequence that would usually cause it, or it needs another component to manifest that isn't present. This is why, while in more subtle ways than the crass differences between how people of different races behave, some behaviours will be present in one person, not present in their offspring, but resurface one generation later. It wasn't gone, it just lay dormant. In many cases, people have a tendency to - especially when they're young - rebel against their parents and instead take on behaviours more resembling of their grandparents. Some people confuse that as rebellious behaviour leading to a conscious deviation from the parents' behaviour, but actually, it is the natural development of the offspring, from their starting point towards it's predetermined destination, but rather than this approximating their parent, it has them move more towards a pattern closer to their grandparent or another relative. 'Like father, like son' doesn't always apply, but that doesn't mean that a person that acts differently than their immediate family is suddenly something completely different from them. Merely that one trait skipped a generation."

* * *

When Asgore and Wayne came back home, it was still in the middle of the day, so he determined that a little detour was in order. They headed up the cliff, so he could walk back into the Underground, through his little palace and down the lift, into the inner city of New Home. In the underground streets, where it was always night, they took a particular route closer to where the palace lay above. They headed past Monsters clad in armor into the royal archives. There, among piles and stacks of dusty mementos, he found an old painting, wrapped in a burlap bag to not scratch and distort the canvas too easily, which he carefully pulled out of a stack of other wrapped paintings. He purchased some particularly long nails and a hammer from an underground hardware store and made his way back to the surface. The moment he arrived, he took off his royal attire and put on something more comfortable. A shirt and some short trousers did the trick. With a toolbox at hand and the painting, he got to work. He measured where the inlets for hanging up the frame were, hammered the nails into the wall, and hung up the painting at the wall next to the entrance door, so everyone who entered, passed by to see it.

It took another hour until Tori and the child came back from visiting someone they knew from school. A greeting and a kiss later, he presented to them his finished work. Toriel was surprised. Not in a good way, but she was too relieved at everything being in order to get caught up on why he would bring old family heirlooms to the surface now. What mattered was that he had gone to pursue the Angel and was back home in one piece. The child however, wound up staring at the painting as Toriel went further inside to put down and sort the groceries they had picked up on their way home. It was a family painting of the Dreemurrs. One generation of the family before this one. It displayed four fluffy Boss Monsters on a red carpet with the grey walls and pillars of a throne room made of stone in the background. In the front were three young ones. One that Frisk recognized, when he faced Asriel at the end of his journey in the Underground. A young man dressed in a royal robe. The one on the right was something he hadn't seen until the end of his journey, when Monsters in large amounts moved back and forth between the surface and the Underground. A young adult Boss Monster much like the one on the left, but with slightly softer facial features. This was what female Boss Monsters looked like before they started growing taller after having their first child. Standing behind them with her hands holding the left and right one in the front by their outer shoulder each stood someone who looked a lot like his Mom, except slightly older and with a stern look. And towering above them was a tall and brought creature. A Boss Monster in the full size of a grown man with children, dressed in the same royal armor Asgore would wield and with the same golden beard and long blonde mane. "What happened?", the child finally asked.

Asgore shook his head. This question seemed too out of context for him to not ponder further. "What do you mean?"

The child pointed at the full-grown Boss Monster. "You look so angry on that picture. And who are these others?"

No-one had openly told to him who this was on the painting, so how could he know? Asgore laughed. He pointed at the Monster towering over the others and explained it to the little human. "That isn't me. Notice this?" He pointed up above the head of the head of that family. One of his horns was cut clean off. Then Asgore faced the child and pointed at his own horns. "You see? Both mine are just fine. Besides, I'm right there." He pointed at the young Boss Monster on the left. No mane, no beard, no armor. He looked so plain back then. And he was so foolish. "This..." His finger moved on to point at the bigger one behind the others. "...this is my father. He isn't angry. He always looked like that. He was always like this. A worried, brooding king, with the worst troubles his kingdom faced at his mind at all times."

"Was he like you?"

He couldn't help but laugh at that. "Oh, far from it. He wasn't known for his mercy. He was feared by anyone even considering breaking the law. Anyone who became enough of a problem for the people to carry their concerns all the way to him, would soon see him pay a visit and...have a serious conversation with them." The child looked concerned. He smiled at him and stared into the eyes of his father again. "Don't worry, his heart was in the right place. There was something he always said." Asgore needed a moment to figure out what it was. He said it many, many times, but the wording was still a little long for impromptu recitals, especially since he hadn't heard him say it for so long. When he had it all back in his mind, he cleared his throat. " 'A king's most important concern is the safety and the wealth of his people. And we must do whatever it takes to ensure it.'" A quick glance to the corner Tori had vanished behind later, he continued. "His kind of 'what it takes', was to carve his way through all criminals with his scythe and to bring death wherever he went. Some were worried that the prophesy of the Angel might have soon been at hand and compared him to the Angel of Death. Who, in some people's faith, reaped the souls of the dead. Even though he did no such thing. Eventually, they just began to call him the Grim Reaper." He patted the child on the shoulder. "I recall catching a glance of a cartoon you were watching with a hooded man with a scythe. The hooded man with the scythe, the grim reaper, that is him. The man himself and the notion of Monsters was lost, but he was the template that that imagery came from. He was the man with the scythe who took lives wherever he went. When the truth was lost and made way for vague myths, people must have started to believe he was death itself."

They both stared at the painting for quite a bit longer until Frisk came up with what was really on his mind. "Why did you bring this up here now anyway?"

"Because something happened that reminded me of him. Come on now, let's not let your mother wait." Softly, he pushed the child to get him to head over to the kitchen where Tori had come back. He brought this painting up here, because there was something else his father often said. 'If you spare someone who killed once, they will perceive it as a reward and kill more. To face a murderer is to make a choice and if they're still alive by the end of it, you made the wrong one. Would you rather that one murderer dies, or that several innocents are murdered instead?' The words of the Angel struck him as too familiar for them to be a coincidence. The three had supper together as always, but he was mentally absent the entire evening. Once he and Toriel were on their own, he told her everything that happened. She agreed that if this Angel was as powerful as he seemed to be, he had no choice to follow him in search for the 'answers' he was looking for. On the next morning, when they all had breakfast, he caught the child glancing over at the painting again and again. There was something on his mind that he didn't want to tell him. Asgore knew him well enough to read that much out of him. When they were done and Toriel had left, he outright asked him. "What is on your mind? Is my father scaring you?"

"Dad..." The child slowed down. He didn't seem sure whether he should ask, but he eventually did. "...Boss Monsters don't age...often. Where is your Dad?" Asgore reached up to scratch away an itch on his ear, leaned on the table and sighed. He would have reacted in some major fashion but he knew this question was coming. Maybe not on this day, but eventually, he had to tell him. "I made a mistake. I made a lot of mistakes. I wasn't the murderer that Monsters needed in the Underground and I wasn't the murderer I needed to be on the surface. You see, there are a lot of bad people out there now. This is my fault. I tore down a wall that kept them at bay and freed them. Their thank for this gift was to burn down all villages that were near their homeland and kill everyone that lived in them. When I came back and found out, they tried the same with me. I did what I had to to defend myself, but there was one child. A little boy with a scar. He spoke a different language, but I found out his name was Tarabi. The child was scared. Cowering in a corner, afraid that I would do to him as I had just done to all his brothers. I couldn't have killed him. He was defenseless. So I told him to flee, and to tell his friends to leave the surrounding countries alone. But when I next came back, a warlord was having the towns and villages of every country in all of the continent around their home sacked and their people wiped out. An entire continent full of many different races, completely and utterly destroyed. They burned down fields. They tore down buildings. And they cut everyone that lived there to pieces. When I first saw his face, I recognized him by his scar. The name of this warlord was Tarabi. The child I spared had gone on to lead his people into killing everyone and destroying everything they could reach. And when he finally got to me, he was much better prepared than when he was but a child. He had armies of ten thousands surrounding me. With tamed beasts larger than most of the buildings around here ready to kill me. My father came just in time to save my life and fend off so many, it scared them into retreating for quite some time. He was capable of accomplishing a lot, but it wasn't enough to keep himself alive. He gave his life to save me. I made so many mistakes. I could have prevented this. So the answer is that he died. And that it is my fault. I could have left the webbed ring intact. I could have killed Tarabi when he was but a child, but I didn't. And even now!" Involuntarily, he smashed his hand into the table and left a dent in it. It startled the child. "Oh, I'm sorry. Even now, I keep making these mistakes. He tried to teach me a lesson I refused to learn and he paid the price."

"B-but mercy isn't a bad thing."

This child had a power that revealed the darkest parts of the world to him, and yet he was so innocent. Asgore tilted his head and ruffled Frisk's hair. "Mercy works with humans and Monsters. But there are some creatures with which no amount of mercy is ever enough to appease them. We all nearly died twice because of this. And even then, I had never really grasped it. Any cruelty I could avoid, I avoided. Even after all the time that passed and all the things that had transpired, I had never learned the lessons of my father." With this, he got up and headed back to his bedroom. It was time to don the armor and head out. The Angel was waiting. Wayne was ready and waiting with the bus at his house when he arrived. Their trip to that same town was uneventful and they were both silent for most of it. Then, when they were on that long, very slightly curved roadway straight back to town, something else happened. The Angel could be seen. By both of them. Standing at the side of the road. They were going too fast to stop, but they didn't need to. After they passed him, about a hundred metres further ahead, he appeared again. In fact, when they reached the cluster of apartment buildings at the edge of the town, he appeared again and did so at every crossing. Wherever he appeared, he was pointing in a direction. Presumably the one he wanted Wayne to take. His directions took the two of them out of the better kept parts of the town and down a long slope to an older district with disjointed roads, buildings that were half-collapsed, more blocky apartment complexes, but as a first omen on how bad things were, a school. An elementary school judging by the little children in the yard. Humans were made to raise children in this trist, decrepit area.

And it only got worse from here. The angel led them past a public sports field with torn-up race tracks to something he didn't believe he would see here. Not here in the west. They stopped before he could climb the hill and only Asgore got out to face the Angel waiting right next to the vehicle. Wayne closed the door without leaving. While stepping forward, the king summoned his trident to serve as an aid in his little hike up the small mountain. The Angel, likewise, stood there with a similarly summoned red scythe. "All right. What is it you want to show me?", he asked. The Angel, his gaze cold and empty again, pointed sideways, up the hill. When the two of them made their way up, he at last saw something much worse than humans being forced to raise children in decrepit housing and near waste disposal facilities. Walls of scrap encased a wide compound of tents and makeshift housing made from old wood and rusty scraps. The area immediately around the walls of the huts were littered with cigarette buds, and needles.

Surrounded by a makeshift fence was...something. A huge field, most of the unoccupied area was covered in trampled, brown dirt. And that wasn't even mentioning the people trampling that ground. Most of the area however was occupied. Cheap, handmade linen tents were set up, the occupants had set up huts made of wooden planks, plastic bits and rusty scrap metal, sometimes two stories high. It was a refugee camp. Further down the road on the other side of the hill were as one could tell from the advertisements on both sides, LoveDontHate-Foundation-sponsored vans that would transport the Orcs living here to wherever they needed to go. In the middle, at the entrance, there was a table. A sign that presumably hung on the two bars that were erected above both sides of the table, was torn down and lay on the ground. It read 'Refugees Welcome' and 'Free Food'. The table was covered in blood and a severed arm lay on the ground next to it. The Orcs hadn't spotted them yet, they were a little slow in this regard, but Asgore immediately saw one of them walk away with a severed human forearm in his hand. When the Angel finally followed to stand next to him, he began to talk. "Volunteers, who felt sorry for the Orcs, came here to give away food and a few random goods like torches or paper. Like with the woman you saw yesterday, they thanked them by tearing down their sign, killing them and eating most of their remains. They wanted to bring food for the people here, so they themselves became food for them instead."

Then, something stirred in the camp. Apparently, the Angel talking was finally what it took for the Orcs to notice the presence of the two Boss Monsters that must have been watching them for minutes. One Orc, pitch-black like the ones from the jungle, who must have been in his thirties, dressed in a torn shirt and torn trousers and wielding a machete in his right hand, stopped, turned their way and pointed at them. "Baphomets!" Immediately, several heads popped out of the huts and tents and a growing amount of Orcs stepped onto the dirt at their feet. They came in different sizes, different skin colours, and different tusk sizes, but they were all brown or black and they all had tusks. Some were wearing rags, some were wearing jewelry. One of them put his cell phone away. They all had cell phones.

Asgore was wondering what the Angel was planning, since albeit with hesitation, the horde of fighting-age Orcs were coming closer and closer. "It is done.", the Angel said. He swung his arm to the side, and a black shroud wrapped itself around the camp, trapping the two of them in the camp and it's surroundings with the Orcs. Or maybe, as Asgore suspected, it was trapping the Orcs inside here with the two of them. Either way, as he would go on to say: "All cameras are disabled, all electronics defunct. They cannot record us. And there is no way out. Let us move on." Asgore went along with the Angel's lead.

They came to a halt when Boss Monsters and Orcs were only a about five steps away from each other. After both sides stared at each other for a while, one of the Orcs, a black one, began to step closer. Another Orc, a brown one, raised his hand to gesture him to stop. "Don't! Khoza, stop! They're dangerous!"

'Khoza' continued, rolled his eyes and grinned. "Pff, nah, dat's some bull." The Orc seemed confident that the two of them wouldn't fight back, seeing as he walked straight up to Asgore and began reaching for the collar atop the king's armor. When his fingers got too close however, they began to change with every inch that got a little too close. They turned green, with strange contours between the 'green'. It happened too fast for the black creature to realize, and when enough of a length of his fingers had turned into countoured green, they folded themselves open and spread out to reveal themselves as twigs with originally wrapped-together, rounded leaves. He didn't notice until his whole hand had turned to wood and was sprouting twigs with leaves, but when he did, he screamed and pulled it back. And pulling his hand away from Asgore wouldn't turn it back either. "W-white devil! White devil! Sorcery!" The rest of what he screamed while he ran to the other side of the compound was too incoherent to make sense of.

Asgore and the Angel exchanged looks. There was something familiar in his face, even though all his eyes had to offer were disdain and suppressed rage for these brutes. It was as though Asgore knew him personally enough to get a good idea of what he was thinking, just from looking at him. "They're not wrong, you know." They were covered in white fur, they had horns like a lot of the cervine mythical creatures Orcs and humans lumped together with horned devils upon the Monsters' arrival on the surface and the Angel had used magic to turn the Orc's hand into wood. In fact, when Khoza was on the other side of the camp, he didn't stop screaming but rather sounded more erratic. He drew the attention of everyone in the camp and even the Orcs that surrounded the Boss Monsters were opening up and turning around to watch him. Khoza was grabbing one leg with both arms and trying to pull it up as if it was rooted. In fact, it was rooted in a much more literal sense. Brown roots had burst out of his torn shoes and were spreading and growing into the ground. He tried a few more times to use the force of his other leg to pull himself off the ground, but then his other foot was sprouting roots as well. Under trembles and sudden moves, movements and sounds that indicated terrible pain, his body forcibly twisted itself and stretched out it's slowly hardening arms, which grew longer and wider. More arms spread out of his stomach and back and his torso began to grow and take on a lighter shade of brown than his original skin. The same happened with his head. Branches grew out of all sides, with leaves covering the ends and within seconds, his entire body spread out, ceased to be that of an Orc and left behind only a great, healthily green tree. The only indication that it had been a person, were the torn pieces of clothing that hung off some of the branches at the ends.

Upon turning back around to face the Monsters, one of the Orcs pulled out a gun on them. Out of reflex, Asgore moved aside to cover the Angel with his own body. The Temmies had given him a shielding device, he would be fine. Before he could point it at them though, the same brown Orc that had warned Khoza before, forcibly pushed the firearm back down. "Stop! What if they're just defending themselves?" When he thought the other Orc agreed with him, he nodded Asgore's way. "What do you want?...Wait, no!" The moment he didn't pay attention to the armed Orc, he seized the moment to raise his firearm again, pointed it at the king and pulled the trigger. Asgore would be fine. The bullet wouldn't even reach him. For a moment, his heart sank when it did reach him, but when it did, it was just a tiny pile of leaves unwrapping themselves and stumbling off his face. When they saw them fall on the ground, it seemed all the other Orcs took that as a sign to attack. Who knew, maybe their minds worked in such a way that they perceived Asgore not dying from getting shot as an attack on them, and were fighting back in their minds. They all pulled out their firearms. Every single one of them had one. An overwhelming barrage of leaves hit the two goats, too much to just stand in place. Even though most of it was drained when the bullets were transformed, the remaining force was enough to push them back a few steps. The Angel dragged Asgore a few steps further down. When the leaves settled on the grass, the Orcs twitched and stared at their guns. Some of them shouted at the others, telling them to let go of them. The weapons were moving about in their hands and on the ground. Disturbing creaking sounds, the breaking and shifting of metal left them drawing themselves together and rearranging themselves into narrow wooden lines. Once on the ground, they cast roots like the black Orc and began to sprout up and become a few shrubs and bushes.

From the plain belts they had for sheaths, they pulled out their machetes and began roaring and charging towards the two Monsters. The younger Boss Monster swung his arm once and all of the Orcs but two were launched off their feet and left to tumble onto the ground. The Angel raised his scythe and dashed past the right one, slicing his body clean into two pieces. The blade cut through the savage's body like through warm butter. Asgore took a more tried and tested approach with the one on the left. He charged right at his attacker, used the three ends of his trident to yank the weapon off the Orc's hand and covered his mouth with his own hand. He did as he did before when the Temmies helped him protect Shoneon Village and burned the oxygen in the Orc's lungs to suffocate him within seconds. When the rest of them got back up, some of them ran back. Some were picking up their weapons again with intent to charge at them once more, but with one swing of his scythe, the Angel conjured up curved spikes that shot out of the ground and impaled them. The ones that ran back were met with reinforcements, but they didn't get that far either. It started out as a short stumble but before they knew what was happening to them, their feet grew roots like Khoza's did before. The Angel dispelled his scythe and raised his hands in two directions. One was roughly between the other Orcs that now came out of their tents and huts with more guns, the other seemed to begin at the very, very right hand side and slowly turn left so as to cover the entire area. The reinforcements were forced to drop their guns, the few bullets that made it their way, were turned into leaves and seeds, and wherever the angle of his other palm was covered, the ground beneath the camp began to open into clefts and the earth itself seemed to drag the walls of the makeshift huts down beneath the ground, leaving the Orcs between them homeless and unsheltered. Wherever there were multiple layers of huts, Orcs were left stumbling and struggling to find something to hang onto until the ground beneath the walls closed again and only with luck or at the Angel's questionable mercy, managed to stay alive.

With all the huts, the walls, the tents gone, the Orcs all lay bare. They were almost all fighting age men. With only a few women or children here and there. They were all sad creatures dressed in shredded rags, but armed with firearms, axes or machetes and equipped with modern cell phones. One Orc whom the Angel had failed to root in place properly, broke free and charged at them. One was no problem. Asgore could easily ram the pointy ends of his trident into the savage's neck and pull his corpse aside. The men began to tremble, as it dawned on them how powerless they really were when faced with these 'white devils' as they called the two Boss Monsters. The infants, held by their mothers, began to cry. One child sounded more and more panicked and as it tried to run back to it's mother, Asgore saw why. It's feet were being rooted to the ground like those of the warriors. He turned back to the Angel. "Wait! No!" The Angel heard him, but he did not so much as twitch. Under the pain of the legs being thinned, widened again and turned into wood under unsettling cracking noises, the child cried and reached for it's mother, only for the smooth brown of the skin on it's arm to make way for the rustic brown of a branch as it stretched itself out and began to sprout twigs and leaves. The terrified child was transformed into a tree, right before the eyes of it's crying mother.

Asgore was about to ask the Angel what he was doing, but he lost balance before he could say a thing. He was floating up into the air and so was the Angel. Down below, more and more of the Orcs, desperate to escape but with no means of doing so, were turning into more and more trees. Sometimes the roots their feet sprang dragged them away from each other so that there was a modicum of distance between the trees. The Angel's eyes began to glow with a blinding white light. He swung his arms past each other with his hands open. And then, once high enough above the compound, with no regard for the king's pleas for him to stop, he spoke. "It is time to bring this to an end." He pointed his palms down on the ground and chanted: "The ground nurtures plants, plants are eaten and trampled by Orcs. One form of life has become another. I simply revert this! Orcs! Destroyers of nature! Be returned to the earth!" When he spoke those last words, a bright white ray of light cast itself from his hands straight down into the ground in the middle of the compound. With it, a wave of energy washed across the camp in an even, expanding circle like the ripple caused by a drop falling into a still body of water. Wherever the wave passed, the brown dirt of the earth was covered in bright green grass and bushes. All Orcs' painful transformation into trees completed itself in a flash. The barely held-up fence was left behind. As were the clothes that loosely hung off the trees. But other than that, the entire Orc camp was gone and had made way for a lush field of grass and a slightly forested hill. Asgore was silent but he was distraught over what had happened. Whether they attacked the two of them or not, men, women, children, the Angel spared no-one. All the Orcs were dead.

Slowly, but surely, they both glided back down from the cold sky, onto the now healthy-looking piece of landscape that was once a camp for Orcs. Asgore braced himself for the landing and upon focusing on landing on his feet with his trident as an aid, he regained his balance. They remained quiet. Both of them. The Angel wandered to one of the trees to brush his hand along the leaves and make sure he had done good work in the life he created from those occupants. Slowly, Asgore made his way to the Angel and finally mustered up a word to ask him what beyond all his questions was on his mind in this moment: "Why? Why did you kill them all?"

The younger Monster didn't seem the least bit caught with this question. He let go of the leaves and faced him without a shred of guilt or remorse in his eyes. "To save the lives of those they were going to kill."

"I understand the men that attacked us! We were defending ourselves. But what about the ones that didn't?"

"They all had drawn blood, they all would take more lives later. I can see their past, I can see their future."

He followed him and once close enough, grabbed the young man by both shoulders beneath his sharp collar. "Even the women? Even the children? Why did you not at least spare the children?" Silence. Even now, it didn't appear judging from the Angel's expression, that he felt he had done anything wrong. "Answer me!"

"The children that would grow up to learn from their fathers, driven by the same urges as their fathers, and would go on to kill like their fathers? Those children?"

"...the wom..."

"The women, that would go on to breed more children, more killers in the making, those women?" Eventually, he let go of the Angel and took a few steps back. "You're letting your mercy cloud your judgement. Again. And that leads only to bad decisions in the long run. Grant mercy where you can. Not everywhere indiscriminately. Not to people that will only abuse it. How many more mistakes must you make until you understand this? How much more must you lose? How many loved ones need to die at the hands of people you spared for you to begin to balance out your decisions?"

These words echoed in his mind. Because they resonated with so many doubts he had himself. How much more must he lose? How many loved ones...then it dawned on him. He had his suspicions, but now it seemed all the more clear. There was but one ruler of Monsters he could think of, that this all matched. Who was known for his mercilessness, who would wield a scythe into battle and summon curved earth spikes for magic attacks. Who would slay any he deemed too wicked without a shred of guilt or remorse. And who would always, always tell him to stop sparing the guilty and those poised to becoming guilty later on. Each time telling him that he would only regret that decision as time went on. A loved one he lost at the hands of a child he spared. "Father?", he asked and stared the young man right in the eyes. "Father, is that you?" This must have been why the Angel looked just like himself when he was young. Much more so than other Boss Monsters their age. He wasn't met with the confirmation he asked, so he went on. "It has to be you! You came back to correct my mistakes. This is why you're killing Orcs. The Orcs...it's all my fault." If the Angel had taken human souls, he always was so powerful that Asgore's life lay in his hands, so he wasn't afraid of giving 'his father' a hug either. "You came back! You came back from the dead like Wayne said!"

Asriel reciprocated it. "I am not your father and I don't think that is what Doctor Gaster said."

The king shook his head. "I understand if there is some reason you can't tell me it's you. I know it to be true!" He began to tremble in the arms of this stranger. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. It is my fault! All of this! I didn't know what to do after you were gone! We lost everything! Mother, You, Asgore!" 'Asgore' referred to Asgore II. The king's little brother. Killed by a very determined human in a vendetta over a son he believed a Monster had killed. As was his mother and everyone in his father's 'Mountain Court'.

"I am not your father." The Angel pushed the two of them apart again and faced him with a look much less empty than before. It was as though at last, he was really looking at Asgore. "But I am not a stranger either. I have always been watching in any way I could. Sometimes helping in whatever way was possible. And I think I found a way to return for good. But I need more time, and unless we do something about a few of those Orcs, we won't have any."

"Who are you?"

"I don't want to create false expectations in case I fail." He smiled. "In time, you will understand. And when you do, I hope you will accept me."

Accept him? Who was he? He said it as if there was some contention, even if he was family. Some exiled brother or uncle he didn't know about? He had to be related to him in some way. He could only repeat himself. "Who **are** you?"

"Someone who wishes more than anything to come home. Which is why I can't come back yet until I am sure that it will be as likely to succeed as it can. But things look dire. Too dire. We need to buy ourselves some time."

"For what? Why is there no time?"

"Things look much more grim than even critical minds know it to. Humanity is dying at too fast a rate. There are countless more camps like this one spread across the continent. Filled with false 'victims of circumstance' who slaughter with glee and with impunity upon arriving. The justice system won't dare touch them."

"I dread what you're implying."

"We have to take matters into our own hands. Only death puts a stop to their rampages. They turn everything into a ki...they make every human make the choice between survival and murder. I must. Would you accompany me?"

"And become judge, jury and executioner as we did with the mugger yesterday? Or everyone here today?"

The Angel began to show Asgore a faint smile. "You must make the law, you must decide how the law is applied and if no-one else will, you must put it into practise the way you want it to be. What is a king, if not judge, jury and executioner combined?"

It was hard to argue with that. The king used to be - and always has been - a person that united all three powers of their kingdom. Any king that could be relied upon at least. So it was best for him not to even try to argue something he didn't disagree on. Instead, he resorted in a simple plea. "I know I can't persuade you otherwise. But You could nonetheless show a little mercy when you pursue the other camps."

The Angel's look turned cold right again. "There is a time for mercy. There are people whom mercy appeases. These invaders are no such people."

"That is just the thing my father would say. No mercy for some people, whatever the circumstances."

"I told you." The rustling of grass behind Asgore announced the slow steps of a thin, lengthy skeleton walking up the hill. When Wayne arrived, he stood stiff like a lamp post and put his hands together behind his back. With the crescent openings of his mask-shaped skull all turning their ends downwards. "I told you he isn't known for his mercy."

Asgore was getting tired of these games. They both knew things they wouldn't tell him. This game they were playing was childish. He pointed at the Angel with both arms and began to roar. "What do you know about this man that I don't?" He was about to grab the Doctor when the surprising and at the same time, soothing grip of his apparent relative pushed his arm back down.

"He is not telling you for the same reason as me."

"And what would that be?" At this point he got as agitated and loud with Asriel as he did with Wayne.

"Because I am unsure." He turned around and took a few steps away from Asgore. "Some futures are determined strongly by what I do. They are blurred. I can't see them properly. Mine more than any other." He faced the king again, this time, his face had softened up. "I want to come back to you, I really do, but I need more time and I don't know if I will succeed. I don't know if it will work!" Everything left this 'Angel' cold. Everything, he expected, saw coming and was prepared for. But who he was and his 'return' seemed to be the subjects that seemed to stir him the most. "I don't want to make you anticipate something that I'm not sure will happen. For now, this will have to suffice. But I can offer you one thing." Eventually, he extended one hand the king's way. "Come with me. Let's save humanity together."

This was what gave the king the confidence to finally turn his back on the Angel and walk back past the Doctor, back down the hill. "I will not join you on your bloodthirsty crusade."

He thought this would disappoint the Angel, but the Angel smiled as he slowly drifted back up into the sky. "Know that my offer stands. If you change your mind, walk out into the fields around our village and call for me. Even if you do it silently, I will hear it. And please..." He was already heading down, but hearing the Angel like this had him look back up at him. "...keep an eye out for Orcs. They are everywhere and none of them are well-intentioned. Everywhere." These were the last words he ushered before disappearing, but when Asgore headed back down the hill to get to the bus, the words were stuck in his mind. He repeated himself to emphasize that there were Orcs everywhere. He could only infer that the urgency in his voice meant that there even were some in Shoneon Village. Asgore usually paid close attention to confront any large gatherings of Orcs coming, and luckily, they were deterred ever since their last major attack wound up with all it's participants vanishing. But there may have been a single one passing through here or there that he didn't pay attention to. The trip back home was as silent as the trip here, but for other reasons. Asgore was brooding. He was still upset over the Angel killing those women and children. What if one of them grew up not murdering anyone? What if one of the women didn't give birth to a criminal? What if there was at least one innocent among them? There was no way for him to know at this point. Then again, for the Angel, there was.


	62. The Rise of the Angel

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Rise of an Angel

Chapter 05

The Rise of The Angel

* * *

The knowledge Asgore gathered in those two days of this Angel wasn't really reassuring, but he knew with contentment that there was something he was doing that Asgore didn't agree with. There just was no way for him to stop the Angel either way. All he knew or believed to know with growing certainty, was that the Angel - if he was who he and Brother Wayne were alluding him to be - was some relative of Asgore's. His first guess was that he was his father Asgrim, but when he came to think about it, from Asgard to Astaru, none of the Dreemurrs were really known for their mercy until he came along. On the first few days after his encounters with the Angel, he had trouble just facing that he had to accept whatever this Angel was going to throw at them. If he went on a rampage - whether it was the will of those human souls he had absorbed or his own - if he let any of the consequences come their way, Asgore would have to deal with them. It troubled him. And not once could he wake up without Toriel signalling that she could tell that something was on his mind. And that she knew what that was. Asgore went about his days as usual. He made his rounds through the village even though when covered in snow, there was no need for flowers to be watered. They barely grew without some magic help anyway.

About a week in, he turned more and more agitated. More and more frequently, he took out his phone to stare at it. Expecting any second to receive a phone call to announce something horrendous having happened. Maybe the Angel got caught, or filmed and couldn't erase it. Maybe he met someone determined enough to remember him regardless of what he did. What if there would be retaliation? Government shakedowns exposing all the buildings in the whole village to not be up to regulatory standard, police arresting Monsters for misdemeanours or yet worse. Humanitarian activist organizations sending more hordes of Orcs to try to destroy the village and kill everyone in it. But regardless of how often he checked, day after day, nothing of the sort happened. If the Angel was going on this bloodthirsty crusade he was announcing to Asgore, he was covering his tracks very well. Then again, maybe the notions Wayne and similarly minded fellows were circulating weren't exaggerated and not being human really did grant complete impunity. He ran his hand down his face upon thinking this, feeling the claw brush along his beard and pulling at some of the strands while doing so. There was no way it meant complete impunity, maybe for particular cases like Orcs. Otherwise some other groups like Centaurs, Naga, Goblins or Houzes would have realized that by now.

To his surprise though, there seemed to be no reason to be on edge. That call on his phone, that scream that would hall through the streets to announce that mayhem was on it's way. It never came. If the Angel was doing what he told him he would do, he was successful in not letting this have an impact on the Monsters here. Day by day, when he began to realize this catastrophe he expected wasn't going to happen, he also began to overthink a few of the things the Angel was saying. About Orcs and their innocence - or rather their lack thereof. He grew a little more conscious around them, especially when he took the child to the comparably ethnic district in the outer part of the city to fetch some supplies you couldn't get in the two grocery shops Shoneon Village had. When they left the train back in the village, it was already dark, even though it was only evening. After spending such a long time underground, it was going to take some getting used to different seasons of the year having different times in the day when the sun went down. On their way home, something did draw his attention though. At first it looked like four floating eyes in the dark. Then upon closing in, it turned out to just be an Orc. The lower 'eyes' were just his tusks reflecting the light of the one street light on the crossing they were at, that actually worked. Asgore figured Monsters would have to lay hand on those too if they wanted them to cast any light and not just be an impotent federal expense. The Orc hasted past the two of them. He was a broad-shouldered man in his mid-to-late fourties judging by the facial features. He had black, graying hair that was cut down to a third of an inch and an unshaven face, which left him with a short, but already unhealthy-looking beard along his neck. They didn't witness him being here for long though, as next to the road right beside them was a low-cost-brand car that the Orc immediately got into to drive off into the night. A curious encounter, but perhaps just someone on their way through here or curious about possible talk of a village inhabited by magic Monsters. For the time being, he made sure that the child stayed close.

He wouldn't have thought anything of it. If it weren't for the next day and the day after that. When he made his rounds through the village, he spotted the same car, parked exactly where it was last evening. It was parked at a peculiar spot that wasn't an actual parking spot, merely right next to the walkway. Directly to it's side was a narrow alleyway between two nearby Monster houses of unusual, cardboard-box themed designs. They weren't really made of cardboard, only designed and painted to look like they were. The alleyway was only just wide enough that Asgore could squeeze in with his shirt. But also narrow enough to draw little to no eyes from anywhere on the street if you were doing something conspicuous there. Upon coming back out of there though, he was shocked for a moment upon seeing something catch his eye, way up on the rooftops. A figure, judging by how it was standing, it was facing him. And upon looking at it, it indeed was the Angel. He was here. He faded away immediately, but he was here. For the time being, he tried to forget about it and continued making his rounds. He did come across the same Orc a little later, a little uphill. By coincidence no less, in a place he didn't expect him at. In the upper side of the village, where a lot of the disorderly and colourful houses built by Monsters for Monsters were located, in the middle of the little park, this rather tan individual was sitting on a bench. Watching the children in the playground. Driven both by curiosity and newfound cautiousness, he approached the bench and sat down beside the Orc. He at first pretended to sit down to get some rest after walking along the whole village. Then, he greeted the stranger. "Howdy there. You seem like a new face to me." The Orc immediately seemed tense around the king and continued to stare at the playing children. Ever so slightly, the king tried to tip his shoulder with one finger without injuring him with the claw that was at the end of it. "Hello?" As if shaken out of a trance, the Orc began to acknowledge him.

"Oh, uh, hello." They resumed to watch the playground.

"One of these children yours?"

The Orc glanced back at him for a moment, then at the playground, then back at him. "Ye...uh...no." Asgore was a bit curious as to what this was about. A glance across all the children currently playing there, he could tell one thing that might have related to this awkward interaction. There was no Orc child. Not that he would have expected one, but now, it seemed to match the different interpretations of their interaction that he was rushing through in his mind. Particularly, it would have made sense to him if the glance at the children was to check if one of the children was an Orc. Did this man intend to lie to his face?

He thought of a way to find out. "I am sorry if I startled you."

Now awkwardly avoiding Asgore's sight, the Orc very slightly shook his head. "It's okay..."

"I try to know every face I meet here. But I know." With his suspicions raised, Asgore picked out his phone and turned on it's camera. "Humans use these things for these 'selfies', right? Let us make one together and then forget all about just before." He pulled out his phone and began holding the Orc by his opposite shoulder.

Predictably, the stranger shuffled away and tried to escape. "You really don't need to."

He knew he'd be met with resistance, but simply grabbed the man a little more strongly to hold him. "Oh, but now, I insist. No worries, it won't take more than a second!" He adjusted the camera menu Toriel had showed him, brought his face as close as he could to the Orc's without the beard covering his face and made a 'peace' sign to complete the pretense. Like he had said, it was over in a second. The moment he was let go, the stranger said his goodbyes and couldn't get out to march back in his car's direction fast enough. It didn't matter. Asgore had all he needed. The next stop was on the outer edge of the village. When he finally heard the clumsy steps down a staircase from within, the door quickly swung open, held open by a barely mentally present skeleton. His asymmetrical eye-sockets were glued to a tablet he was reading from and a toothpick was hanging off the right end of his mouth. "Good afternoon, Wayne."

At last, the Doctor tipped something on the screen and then put it aside to pay attention to his king. "'Ello." He put the toothpick aside and offered the king to come in. "What do I thank this visit?"

"I require your aid." He fumbled out that phone again and handed it to the Doctor. "Oh, wait." Then he realized that just giving the skeleton a phone wasn't going to do much. He had to open up the picture he had taken. "I need you to find out who this person is. I know you have the means. I would ask Alphys, but I am uncertain to whether I should involve her in this."

Wingdings gave it a close look and then paused. "Hm. Yes. That person would be Asgore Dreemurr. Known as the King of Mons..."

He knew he was jesting, and Asgore couldn't suppress a chuckle. "I meant the other person on there of course."

Still acting as if he didn't know any better, Wayne nodded. "Oh, right, you meant the Orc. Why didn't you say so? Stay right here, this will only take a minute." At this point, Asgore knew full well that brother Wayne could complete any such task. Anything. Even things a normal Monster would need months or years. This was nothing in comparison to some feats he had seen from him within minutes. He came back out within two. When he did though, he was dressed in a white silk robe with golden decorations sewed onto it's entire length and his inhuman skull covered in a white cloth that went all the way down his shoulders. He was dressed like an Imam. An Orcish priest. And the king spotted some sand falling off the cloth on his shoulder when he swung that door back open. The only thing about him, that was the same, was the computer he had on him. He swung his finger along it's side to slide to a different window. "Now then, which one would this be..." Before he went on, the Doctor stopped to check for the date, confirmed it and then proceeded. "Ah, this is the one where you ask me about an Orc you spotted. One second - while I was at it I investigated a few, but I'm assuming it's one of the twenty-first-century ones...ah yes, that would be him." When he finally showed him what he had, the display on this handy device depicted a range of information on the person Asgore had seen, including age, birthplace and a mug shot of him in the corner. "The name is Majid Hasheeni. At least that's how he writes his name, but he seems to pronounce it Majeed, with a stretched-out 'e'. Electrician, works at a unionized temp agency - the irony - a faithful man who visits a mosque near the main city every week and he likes to spend his spare time watching children on playgrounds. Cross-reference shows..." He brought his finger closer to swipe along the display and switch to a set of small news columns. "...that wherever he does watch children, children start going missing. Law enforcement even has records of by-standers calling the police on him, but hey, Majid's an Orc, so what's the police going to do?" With a shrug, he let go of the device and left it for Asgore to browse the windows he had opened. "I'm sure he's completely harmless and this is all just one big coincidence. It isn't like Majid and his brothers - oh, I forgot to mention, there's several of them, and they all share the same hobby. And like with him, wherever they go to watch children at playgrounds, children disappear later on. Where was I? Oh right. It isn't like Majid and his brothers might be using their impunity to run some sort of child trafficking ring. That would just be preposterous. And racist."

Any relaxation had long left Asgore's face. As well as the rest of his body. He caught himself instinctively taking a battle stance with his legs ready to last against the force of any attack that might come from an enemy that wasn't there. "Enough with the sarcasm, Wayne. This is serious."

"All right. So now that you have an idea of why he's here, what are you going to do about him?"

"For the time being, I believe I scared him away. But he will return." He grumbled. "Where is this 'Angel' in a time like this? Isn't this exactly his domain? Wouldn't he know? He must know!"

Wingdings raised an eyebrow. Not that his eyes were perfectly symmetrical as it was. "I'm not quite certain why you bring up the 'Angel' right now."

"Because I - I think I saw him. I am not sure myself."

The Doctor took a moment. "Hm, describe what it is that you saw."

"I only saw a shadow, but it had his shape. It was watching me from a roof and then vanished."

Wayne nodded. "Yes, that sounds like what you'd expect from someone who is trying very hard to be 'mysterious'."

"Couldn't you just tell me who he is?"

"No can do. But, this all might make sense. He probably knows about all this and is watching you. If he is, then this is a test. He's not interfering in this case, because he wants to see whether you will take care of this if someone has to and no-one else will. The perfect situation without creating a too controlled environment. Couldn't have orchestrated something more fitting myself."

"You seem a little too entertained, considering."

Wingdings shrugged and took a step further back inside. "Hey, I always serve the house of Dreemurr. My concern is the survival of humans and Monsters first and foremost. Costs and means to achieve it are secondary to me. If an Orc has to take and kill one more innocent child so that a Dreemurr learns a valuable lesson and several others' lives can be saved in the long run, that is a win in my book. Besides, you don't have to let that happen, do you?" He stopped, straightened out his body and raised a finger. "Your new friend Majid can't abduct anyone if he isn't alive."

A growing disappointment crept up the lowered corners of the king's mouth. "What happened to you, Wayne?"

This was enough to make the skeleton turn serious at last. "Reality happened. Nothing is quite as eye-opening as the reality of life itself. Of seeing the long-term consequences of seemingly harmless decisions. The train dilemma - or the trolley dilemma - is no dilemma to me at all, because I've seen too many families face loss to be distracted by singled-out stories. If you could sacrifice the life of one innocent person to save those of multiple of the same age, would you do it? The answer, in my case, is yes. With no hesitation. People that are confronted with that answer tend to respond to it with thoughts like 'but the multiple are just a number, right? The one person is a human being with a life and a family'. A flaw in human reasoning that Elves exploit with no remorse to drive humans to sacrifice the many to save the few. Themselves being the few in some cases. A number may seem non-personal, but always remember that each person described within such a number, even if less familiar because the cameras aren't pointed at them, just like the singled-out and highlighted core example you could kill them all to save, is a person with a life of their own and loved ones of their own. I believe the Angel, while able to see your immediate future when he isn't interacting with you, would be willing to sacrifice one child from this village if it means that you will never again allow something to happen to any others. Because those others you might let slip otherwise are just as innocent and as precious as the one on the other side. And this is the reasoning he is acting on."

The king closed his eyes upon catching himself almost summoning his trident. "Very well. If the Angel won't get his hands dirty, then I must take action to defend my subjects."

"I can promise you there is a context to it. He is someone for whom this subject matter hits very close to home. In several ways. He won't be able to do what he is doing now forever. He can't protect humanity forever. For your own sake and that of all of us, he needs to be sure that you are ready."

Asgore had already turned his back on him and slowly went back down the street. "If you say so, Wayne. Let us get this over with as quickly as we can."

As suspected, on the very next day, that car was parked in the exact same spot again. Asgore wasn't in position in time to catch Majid when he was arriving, but he wasn't spotted by him either. He tailed the Orc to make sure he was going through the same routine as before. He went to the same park, the same playground and sat down on the same bench. Breaking the law with impunity for years left him careless, just as Asgore needed. As soon as he was sure to be out of hearing range, he rushed back home, grabbed some spare clothes, a few empty bags, a bottle of water and one of the several cleaning agents they had in store for hard-to-get-out spots, a gardening shovel and rushed back to the Orc's car to dump everything in a corner in that narrow little area between two buildings just next to it. He was sweaty and out of breath, but more than in time. The blinds were down on one of the windows in this niche. The ground between the buildings was covered in overgrown soil, but a lot of this corner consisted of the outer ends of the property that belonged to the houses that surrounded it and had little flowerbeds marking the ends of each, which Asgore carefully scooped out with the shovel and laid aside, before shoveling out an entire grave's worth of earth. Once he was done with that, all he could do, was wait.

Then, when the rough time came around, Majid came back and was about to get back in to pull out. "Hey!" He called Majid before it got that far, waved and beckoned him to come closer, and waited. Slowly and carefully, the Orc did oblige. He came around the car, and froze when he saw the freshly-dug grave. But by then, it was too late for him. He was where Asgore needed him to stand. With a subtle swipe of his hand, the king summoned a solid earthen spike from within the grave, which thrust straight through Majid's chest. It was over too fast for the Orc to scream. In fact, it was doubtful he had a set of lungs or vocal chords to scream with, as those parts probably hung off the spike's pointy end by then. With a deadly swiftness, the spike retracted to pull the man straight down into his grave. Once it was gone, the king considered wiping the sweat off his forehead, but that would have been a bad idea considering the dirt on his hands. You would have seen the brown sullying the white of his fur from everywhere. The deed was done, time to cover the aftermath. He stepped closer and into the grave with one foot to remove the corpse's jacket and trousers. If he had a cell phone, passport, credit cards, anything that might have had a tracking device built-in, he had to remove it. A task that proved easy enough, as he had his phone and his wallet in his jacket pockets. With those stowed away in a bag, he covered Majid in earth and closed the grave once more, leaving a little space to carefully put the patches of grass and flowers back where they were. The earth left over from opening the grave, filling it with an Orc and closing it without looking like someone was buried here, he filled into the other empty bags, patch after patch, crumb after crumb. With the deed done and the site concealed, he set out to carry everything back to Wayne's house.

He hadn't even reached the door, when it swung open to reveal an overly happy robed skeleton. "Ah, the deed is done. No worries, I'll take care of this. One quick EMP..." He pulled out a strange device. As soon as he was shown the Orc's wallet and phone and used it on those. "Well those electronics are fried now. I'm not even sure why you had such scruples. You must have killed dozens of Orcs ever since we came back up here."

"Both times, they threatened to destroy the village and kill all of us."

Wingdings nodded. "Oh right. Well in a slow way, so did Majid."

"I did not arrange for this." The king, shocked at hearing a young man's voice right behind him, shrugged together, braced himself and turned around. It was the 'Angel', dressed in his robe as usual. "I merely watched to see with certainty, what you would make of it."

Asgore relaxed for a bit upon seeing who it was. He had good reason to be furious, but he wasn't. "This isn't how you treat people. Strong-arming them into playing along with your tests."

"The situation is too dire to leave room for 'how you treat people'. I needed you to be prepared for my offer."

"And what kind of offer could give you reason forcing this on me puts you in a better position to make it."

"There are many more camps like the one we visited. Filled with remorseless pillagers posing as innocents running from war. Hard times are approaching. One thing that might ease your path through it is to practise on the most obvious and guilty enemies."

"You want me to help you murder refugees."

"I don't need help, and these invaders are not running away from anything. You are mistaking flight for invasion, like a human."

"You want me to partake in destroying their camps."

"The Orcs ARE destruction. To remove it and replace it with the nature they destroyed can hardly be described as destroying anything. You should know this better than anyone, considering your history with them."

With a few hasty steps, Wingdings moved in to break the heated Monsters apart. "Now, speaking of which. 'Your Highness', how much exactly do you remember of - uh - that time? Your time?"

Raised shoulders slowly dropped and uneven breaths regained their rhythm on both sides. An obvious distraction from a growing fight between relatives, but one that worked. The Angel looked down. "It is blurred. All I can sense, I take from your memory. I can't actually see 'my' time."

The Doctor smiled. "Ah, that will be because it's from a timeline we haven't created yet. Not in this state of the universe. We'll get there. If we can get humanity through all this alive." He put his hands together behind his back and swung around to Asgore. "I can tell you right now, there will be a lot of killing and destroying in the not so distant future, regardless of which way it goes. The only thing we can influence, is who is killed and what is destroyed. In humans, we can find an ally, but those Orcs aren't just going to sit back and let us live if they can do something about it. Unless it's them you want to live and us to die, you had better made a decision, soon."

The half-open look of a person that couldn't believe what he was hearing crept up the king's face. "Really? You give me no answer and make demands? What happened to 'your highness'?"

Asgore was disappointed in his friend siding with the Angel over him, so Gaster was left muttering bits of sentences that he failed to string together into anything. The Angel stepped aside to speak in his stead. "If an answer is what you want, I can't give it to you yet. The time isn't right. You wouldn't believe me if I told you. But I can promise you one thing. When this is all done, I will attempt something. I can't see whether I will succeed, but if I do, you will know who I am. You have my word." He began to phase down into the ground, vanishing through the pavement like a ghost. "If and when you made your decision, simply call for me when no-one is looking or listening. I will know."

"Wait!" Asgore tried to reach for him to grab and stop him, but his hands were as little hindrance to the Angel as the pavement was.

Wingdings merely scratched his chin. "Hm, he still has to work on his exits."

"He still has to work on his concept of a bargain. He yet again makes demands and offers nothing in return, not even guaranteed answers."

Wingdings shrugged. "He doesn't want to disappoint you in case he doesn't succeed. The only way to avoid false expectations is if he doesn't tell you."

"I already know it is my father. He only has to admit it."

Gradually, the skeleton made his way back to his front door. Pretending to be balancing along the stones embedded into the little field of grass in his front lawn, now not covered anymore by melting snow, with his arms stretched out. "I can see why you would think this. But no. He isn't."

"What is it he is trying to do anyway?"

"Come back to life. But properly, unlike his current state. Neither of us can really tell if he will make it, there are timelines where everything else fell into place, but he is still dead. He doesn't want to you to mourn him again if he can avoid it. I'll just tell you everything I CAN say. Looks can be deceiving. Don't judge a book by it's cover. Any given person you know may behave like a completely different person if they gain game-changing insights they didn't have before. Take your father for instance. Do you think he was the deadly juggernaut you knew him as from birth? Do you think he was just born and - as an infant - went..." The Doctor began clenching his fists and swinging them around while putting on an overly silly screech for a voice. "'Slay any scoundrels you find! Let none live in our kingdom who bring mischief!' You keep guessing the Angel is your father because your father killed any criminals he found out about, and the Angel is killing the Orcs for being murderers."

"Not just that, there are things he said that my father said as well."

"Easily explained away. The Angel has at least seven human souls. He can see through time and into your memory. He might have drawn your father's words and his wisdom from within your mind."

"He wields a scythe."

"All right, that seems like a weirdly coincidental choice of weaponry. Maybe he was trying to emulate you without making it as obvious as wielding a trident."

"The way he swung it, it was like..."

"Yes, yes, yes. Where do you think he gets his technique?"

They continued to stare at each other. It all did make sense when Asgore thought about it. He sighed. "All right. I really must overthink this."

"Sleep over it for a day. Or a week. Take your time. But not too much time. Remember, every day you're not killing Orcs, is a day that hundreds of humans get killed instead." He tried his best to pretend in front of Tori as if nothing had happened, but he knew she could tell otherwise. It didn't matter. Until he knew more, all of this had to say between him, Brother Wayne and the Angel. The very next morning, he was rubbing his eyes with regret over what a fool he was being. What was he doing, writhing in protest like a stubborn goat? Those Orcs had threatened to kill him, his people and anyone he loved, multiple times. Had he not stood his ground to defend his people with his life, they would have. Humans had no 'king' to defend them. When Orcs felt like killing humans - which he could only assume they did at least as frequently as with Monsters, they just did, with no 'Asgore' to ask them otherwise. A protector who would ward off those that sought to inflict harm on them. Among other things, but even if nothing else, to be king, was to protect the lives of your people. And humans had no king. If he wanted to live on the surface with humans - even as an ally in coming conflict, he had to become the 'king' of the humans, just like he was for Monsters already.

He went about his next day, as if it was any other day. When Tori and Frisk were out and expecting him to make his rounds, he rushed home, donned his royal armor and ventured out into the fields outside the village. He summoned his trident and struck the ground with its blunt end. "I am ready. Let us do what we can to save this continent." As expected, a smiling young Boss Monster clad in a robe glided down. This time, three pairs of wings formed an arc from his back, around his body and his collar was replaced with a hood, which he had pulled over his head. Two holes in the hood made this possible. He took off the hood and greeted Asgore. "I see you take this 'Angel of Death' title very seriously."

Now with newfound contentment, the Angel smiled and pulled it back up. He summoned his scythe and slowly raised his hand to point off to the distance. "See your fate at future Christmas!", he said with a joking gravitas before pulling the hood back off again. They both laughed. "I know it must be hard for you. It was for me too, at first. It helps to think not of the lives you're ending, but the many more you are saving in doing so." With a flash of light, they were in a completely different place. In the distance, he could still see the skyscrapers and albeit in a different direction than where it was from Shoneon, he could also see the sea. The Angel hadn't taken them far from where they were. They were still within the same city's surrounding area.

"I disabled anything that might record us." They both wandered closer to the camp that was right down a hill they stood on. And once they were close enough, with one hand gesture, the Angel cast a ward that encased the camp in an impenetrable shroud. Asgore touched it's cold surface to make sure of it. Nothing could get out of here. The Orcs were trapped in here with them. This time, the Angel gave them little time to gather and react to their two visitors. With his scythe held to the side, he dashed right into their midst and began cutting the first Orcs he ran into apart. A display of ruthless, deadly precision that Asgore wasn't given much time to process, as a few of the bystanders immediately got out their knives, machetes and assault rifles to attack him as well. Now with little understanding for their position, he slammed the ground with his trident and summoned spikes of earth that dug their way through his attackers before they could take more than one step towards him. After the deaths of a few dozen armed, fighting age 'children', with their rifles and melee weapons lying on the ground, the rest began seeking to flee. And were faced with that same barrier the Angel had cast to keep them in here. Others tried to hide, but both Boss Monsters could use the earth the Orcs built their huts on, to rip those huts to pieces with little effort. It was a bloodbath with no way to run and no way to hide. Within minutes, the entire camp was devoid of life and like before, the Angel lifted the two of them up, before casting a magic attack that turned the ruins of an invaders' camp into a field covered with flowers.

One more flash of light later, they were back in the fields outside of Shoneon Village. With all blood or tells of a battle happening gone from Asgore's armor. "One camp is enough of a start I would say. If you are ready for more, just say so. I will know." The smiling Angel left little time for the king to ask any questions. He immediately glided back into the sky. That didn't matter though. Asgore didn't know why he was, but in a way he hadn't for a long, long time, he felt happy. He couldn't neglect his rounds through the village too much or people would notice his absence. He knew that Tori noticed the change in his mood, but he also knew that not much good would come from involving her. He had to pursue the path that would lead him to his answers. Why the Angel did what he did and who he was. What it was about him that seemed so familiar, if he truly wasn't Asgore's father. Two days later, he donned his armor again and called for the Angel. Again, the Angel took them to a different camp that they razed and replaced with nature. And a few days later, they repeated this. It became a regular activity for them. As their own little father-son-death-squad - each with their own idea of who the father was and who the son - they would travel from camp to camp together. State to state. Country to country, across the entire continent. Purging any Orcs in any camp they visited and replacing the brown of Orcish skin with the green of leaves and blades of grass. Perhaps in this brief, three-and-a-half-month period, they prevented more crimes from happening than Sans did in his entire time of playing superhero and stopping crimes at night.

Then, far into the summer, came a bizarre time where Wayne Gaster insisted on having Papyrus, Sans and Alphys spend over two weeks attending 'special classes' in one class room in Toriel's school and refused to tell his king what exactly they were about. All he said, was that things were going to change several times in the time to come and that the special classes were to prepare them for it, to take as much weight off Asgore's shoulders as was possible. He kept visiting him. In part, because he always was and always would be his friend, even if he sometimes had his differences with Wayne. In part, he was hoping for sooner answers to his questions. Those questions, the Doctor never answered. What got him to talk was a completely different question. As time went on, during Asgore's visits, the skeleton's movements became more sudden. He could tell that the Doctor was getting nervous, but not what about. When it reached too much of an extent to ignore and Wayne's trembling hand left him spilling the tea on the dinner table one Saturday evening, the impatient Boss Monster saw this as the point where he could force the skeleton to tell him what bothered him. "You seem rather distressed lately. What is on your mind?" The truth of course was that he didn't feel quite relaxed either. He felt tense. Nervous even. But he had no idea why.

Wayne stumbled back to the kitchen to fetch a wet cloth to wipe off the tea. "Ugh, I'm sorry I...can't you feel it? I thought Boss Monsters have some kind of sixth sense."

"Except maybe from the Angel, I 'sense' nothing. He seems a bit more...emotional? Sad? No, afraid. It feels to me like he is worried, and now you are so nervous you can't hold a cup of tea."

With a little more attention paid to his grip on the teacups, Wingdings came back with two new cups of tea that didn't spill this time. "Yes, yes, that makes sense, it's just...how do I put this?" He took a sip from his cup, probably to buy time to come up with what to say. "An important event is approaching, and I don't know how it will end up playing out."

Asgore chuckled. "I thought you have a time machine."

"Yes, but my time machine can only travel along the timeline we're in. A lot of LOADs will be involved in what's coming, so my time machine is useless in this case. I can't travel to different timelines, not without help. And you-know-who..." The Temmies, as they both knew. "...aren't helping me here, because the stakes are not political, but personal."

Asgore could only infer the obvious. "The Angel's revival.", and the Doctor nodded.

"It could happen any day now. I have lists of conditions for events to happen and more lists for potential dates, nothing absolutely precise but whenever it is, we are getting really really close to the point where it's bound to...oh no!" He stopped in the middle of his sentence and without a word, walked across his main hall to the window that gave him a view on the upper park, over the roofs of a few lower-situated buildings. "By Asr...Asgrim's beard! We're already there!" He rushed upstairs and with a whole rain of loose pieces of paper, came back down with a few flimsily stapled together sheets. "You wanted to know what it was I was teaching little Sans and the others, right? Well you're in luck. We might just have time for one quick crash course on Monster souls. Now, how can it even happen that a Monster comes back? Their soul breaks apart and vanishes, right? Is there something that can make a soul persist after death?"

While the king pondered his answer, the Doctor stumbled over to a drawer to fetch a few things to stuff into the sleeves in his robes. "Hm, what about determination?"

By then, Wayne was done and raised his finger. "Aha, but a Monster with determination? How can that be? When could that happen? When did that happen..." A quick look had him urge Asgore to get up and get going. "...no more time, we've got to go!" He went on even after they were outside with Wayne's front door closed and locked. "Just remember: The truth will confuse you. The Angel in his current form knows things he otherwise wouldn't, but deep down, he always was and always will be the person you knew him as." They didn't run, but spurted on through a few roads, increasingly crowded and dim with the orange light of a setting sun. He began to feel it. Much more so than before. He felt anxious as to where things would go. Something was very important to the Angel, and everything he cared for would hinge on what happened next. He felt torn about, and the humans and Monsters that filled the area they went to didn't help. Even in more sudden movements than before, the skeleton looked around. "The human! Our human! Your human! Where is he? It won't work without him!"

"He is bound to be at home, no-where near here."

"Doubt that, the Angel will lead him here or signal to him that it's time. There they are!" He immediately stretched his arm along one road to the side. There were a lot of people here with little idea why they were here. Monsters and humans alike only came to see what the tent was about that was raised over an area in the middle of the upper park, just far enough to the side to not overlap with anything from the playground.

And where Gaster was pointing, he came. Holding Toriel by the hand, Frisk seemed to pull her to move closer to the source of the growing commotion. A leather tent, bearing the colours of the Dreemurr family, with it's crest painted onto it's walls. As soon as they were ahead enough to have a clear line of sight, the child let go and went on. "Child! What has gotten into you?", Toriel called after him. Asgore rushed for Toriel first, to hold her back. "What are you doing? We can't just..."

He shushed her until she stopped talking, pulled her in with one arm and then leaned in to speak right in her ear. "I followed he Angel. And the Angel needs help. Our child has a gift he needs to use to help him." He kept her held tightly by her upper arms and once he had Toriel calmed down enough and turned around for Frisk, he saw him. The Angel was waiting for him, right in front of the tent, who zipped open the front door of the tent to let the child inside.

Right into his field of view stepped Wayne who pulled back one of his sleeves to reveal almost a dozen watches wrapped around his upper arm. A quick look on one of them gave him newfound conviction. "Yep! It's definitely time. Wish us luck, Asgore!" The king waved back at the Doctor and trusted the Doctor and Frisk to succeed at whatever their task was. "All right, thumbs up! Let's do this! WAAAAYNE GASTERRRRRRRR!" The Angel, now looking slightly annoyed, kept the entrance open and closed it behind the two of them once they were inside.

"So Asriel! You're back! Did it work?" Frisk was overjoyed to see Asriel again after so long. Asriel, now back to his adult form without wings or a hood or any unnecessary additions to his appearance guided the two of them further inside. The tent was well-lit. There were lights surrounding the entire inner area of the tent built along thin metal structures, similar to what one would use in a theatre or a film set. They were set up to illuminate every angle of the inner area. There, on a mattress, lay Asriel...again. "It's...you.."

The Asriel on the mattress - this time the little boy in the striped shirt his parents had lose - had his eyes closed and wasn't breathing. Through familiar wires, he was connected to an arcane crystal similar to what Chara had done to keep Sam's body alive. The crystal must have been what was keeping the 'other' Asriel intact. The conscious one, the adult Asriel, stepped closer to explain what this was, while Wingdings knelt down on the opposite side of the little goat. "This is a replica of my body, the way it was before...well before Chara's plan. My soul is regrown, but my body is still that of a flower." The radiant smile was slowly leaving the little yellow face. "I need your help for this last task. I can't do it on my own."

"You want me to put your soul back in your new body. But how?" Frisk was just a child, what did he really know of how souls worked?

"You already know humans can absorb Monster souls and likewise, Monsters can absorb human souls. As part of that, human souls are drawn to Monsters and Monster souls are drawn to humans. Once I set free all the human souls and kill this body of mine, I need you to guide my soul into my new body faster than it takes for my new soul to break." He knelt beside his new body. "Truth be told, I'm scared. You and I both know how fast even a Boss Monster soul breaks after their body dies. You won't succeed the first time. This is a challenge unlike any before. On every challenge you faced before in the Underground and on the surface, I was there with you. But this time, not even I will really be there. I am the one you must save. But if you think you are up to the task, this time - at last - you can really, truly SAVE me. Exactly the way you wanted to." He placed his hand on the little boy's shoulder. "Are you sure you are up to the task?" The child tried to show conviction and nodded without a word. He was able to do it. He had to be. That was enough for Asriel. They had to work with what they had. "Then I suggest you SAVE now. This is the point where - oh wait." For a moment, he got back up, snapped his fingers and behind them, a cloudly whirlwind opened up that kept spinning. "A portal. It will stay open for as long as we need it to." When they were back to kneeling at the little body's side, he repeated himself. "NOW is the time to SAVE. Believe me, you have to." He gave the child the time he needed to focus his determination on SAVEing this moment. "I am not taking any chances." A black marker appeared in the grown Boss Monster's hand, which he used to draw a cross on one of the metal bars that the lights were mounted on. "Remove the mark using only your determination." The child concentrated and indeed, the next thing they knew, they were staring at Asriel's new body again. And upon checking, the markings on the bars were gone. "Good."

They all sighed. To say they were anxious was an understatement. How many tries would Frisk need? What if he couldn't do it? This worry was always in their minds. Nonetheless they had to try. There was no way around it. They had come too far to give up now. "Right. Here goes. I trust you, Frisk. Please, do your best." The child nodded and smiled a little more again. With this, Asriel raised his hand. In it, a kitchen knife appeared with a red glowing blade, like the ones Chara summoned in their battle against her. A blade charged with intent to kill. He grabbed it with it's blade pointed towards him and thrust it into his chest.

For a few seconds, he seemed to tear at the seams, before an explosion of white light launched a plethora of human souls in all directions. Frisk had to cover himself with his forearm to catch the blunt of it, and when he took his arm down, he saw that it left behind only one, fragile white soul. Frisk immediately reached for it and saw what Asriel meant. When his hands got close to it, it seemed to inch their way. He thought he was doing it, but he had only brought it half-way to little Asriel, when it already trembled and not long later, broke apart in several pieces and vanished within moments. His heart sunk and he immediately felt like crying. "As..." No, he couldn't stand this, not for any longer than he had to. He immediately LOADed.

Back where he was, Asriel shook his head. "I guess now I know what it's like to be really dead."

"...I'm sorry."

"Don't be. I told you you couldn't do it on your first try." Again, he raised his hand, summoned a malice-charged knife and stabbed himself. Again, he blew up in an explosion of light with human souls getting launched all over the place. This time, with much more foresight on where it was, Frisk reached out to the white soul. Starting faster got it a little further before it trembled and broke apart again. He loaded and without anything more, Asriel simply said: "Again." Again, he stabbed himself, again Frisk reached out. This time, he forgot to ward himself off against the blast and they had to repeat it, because he had a bad start. The next time he got as far as he got the first time. The time after that, he began to notice a pattern. The closer his hands got to Asriel's soul, the faster it moved towards them. What he had to do was to get as close to the soul as possible without absorbing it and guide it fast enough into his new body for it to work. Even this didn't quite reach. After another LOAD, the prince finally asked: "Are you having trouble?"

"Hang in there.", the little human finally answered. "We're getting there. There isn't much left."

"I assume there is a little more I can do." Asriel bent forward a bit to bring his chest closer to that of his new body. Frisk stretched out his open arms below it, clenched his eyes shut and simply held out through the blast that followed Asriel stabbing himself. He could roughly guess where the soul would appear and this time, it actually did get closer to it's destination. Now they just had to repeat this for him to get a more precise grip on where Asriel's soul would appear so he could guide it faster. The blast hurt and was hard to ignore, but he had to. Try after try, he would get a hold of Asriel's soul a little sooner and would bring it closer to where it needed to go. Until eventually, he made it. At one point, in the exact moment he could open his eyes again, he saw the soul almost touching Asriel's new body, guided it further and eventually made way for it to fully phase through into the body that accepted it. It vanished through the fabric of Asriel's sweater, and then silence filled the room. Intently and without a word, Frisk and Wingdings stared at the motionless body to see if it had worked. Then with a sudden move and a gasp that must have drawn in air all the way to the bottom of his lungs, Asriel - now as a little boy, finally woke up. The first thing his slammed-open eyes saw were the souls that burst out of his body during his previous body's death spread in all directions and move through the walls and the ceiling of the tent. The crowd of spectators that they had drawn outside must have seen those leave all at once and vanish into the sky. Where they went, who knew, Asriel had fulfilled their last wishes, all of them. He had to cough a few times to get his breathing in order. "It worked! It worked! I'm alive! I'm actually alive!" With tears of joy in his eyes, he hugged Frisk and Frisk hugged him back. He had finally made it. All those years ago, he had long given up any hopes. He had ceased to care. He had accepted it, even when Frisk and the human souls taught him what it was like to feel for your loved ones again. And in spite of everything, he was himself again. The last time the human gave him a hug, he was so desperate to hold on to his feelings that he sobbed in his ear about not wanting to let go. Now, he wasn't afraid. There was nothing to lose. He had his soul back, his body, his life. He could finally go back home to his parents. Being there as Flowey was not the same. It didn't feel like he was really there, more like he was only observing them. It was an improvement, but only a little better than watching the people he loved mourn his death for years. Now, at last, he could return to his parents.

When Frisk and the skeleton moved back to give him space to get up, he rubbed the tears out of his eyes, removed the wires that kept his empty body alive and got up. "There's one more thing though. I forgot most of what I thought and knew. But I do remember this." He pointed at the whirling clouds right here in the tent that never stopped, eventually giving off a little flash of lightning. "It's safe to go through. Come on, follow me!" He beckoned them to come along and ran straight for the middle of it. At least he tried, before he stumbled and fell over. It seemed he still had to get used to having such little legs. "This can't be, I practised!"

"Maybe you need more practise."

He got back up, jumped right through and a few seconds later, he peeked back from the other side. He was wide awake and filled with joy. The two of them could see as much. And hear it in his voice. "Told you! Now come on!" They were all a little more happy than they would have let on to an outside observer. When things like this happened, you usually were. There always was this worry in the back of your mind, that all of this was too good to be true, so what if it wasn't? Only time could tell. Wingdings followed. In careful steps with one leg at a time, he stepped through the ominous looking portal. On the other side, the skeleton found himself staring at a view he hadn't expected. He knew what he was seeing, but he didn't expect to find this here. Frisk was all the more confused as he had not seen such a thing before. He and Asriel looked at all corners of their surroundings with dropped jaws and little understanding of how to process it.

There was no horizon where they were. The landscape - which was a choice of green grass and forest, grey rock and blue sea, stretched along every angle of what they could see, and instead of vanishing under a horizon as they were used to from living on earth - a planet - it was curved the other way round all the way to the other end, from where it looped back down to where they were. All you could see in the 'sky' was more oceans and land mass in the distance. With a giant, blinding sun in the middle. "Fascinating.", the Doctor remarked. "A Dyson sphere."

"A what?" Frisk and Asriel stared at him with little understanding of what he was referring to.

"Well a spherical structure wrapped around and rotating to keep us...okay, wait." Wayne raised his hand to gesture them to give him a moment to rephrase it. He had to remember that he was talking to children. "All right. Imagine the earth as you know it. A giant ball, and we're all somewhere on it's outside and the ball is moving around the sun. Now imagine the ball is much, much bigger, empty, and we and all of this..." he stepped back, spread out his arms and spun around himself several times. "...all of this is on the inside and the sun is in the middle of it to shed light on us. It keeps you alive and you can't dig your way through the ground without falling into the empty void outside. Which you can't do if you're a little girl as I'm expecting who we're supposed to find here anyway. The perfect shape for a giant habitat that you can't escape from."

"I don't even remember this. I only know that this is where I sent Chara when we last saw her. She's got to be somewhere here!"

Wingdings eventually found something to point at, up a hill. Or maybe it wasn't a hill and just the curvature of the place they were in. Hard to tell, seeing as this sphere was unusually small for a Dyson sphere. "There's a house thataway. That could be it!" Nonetheless the children were outright jumping with joy on their way to the house. Gaster preferred taking his time to walk after them. They weren't in a hurry after all. The house was tiny. Made to fit a child. And when they pulled the door open, next to the tiny chairs of a tiny coffee table, sat a caught girl in a green-striped shirt. There were opened chocolate bars all over the place and more shelves full of them on every wall. Chara's mouth was still smeared with it. She exhibited little shame for what she looked like when she got back up. She had little time to play down her state though, as Asriel immediately jumped at her and pulled her into a hug. "I'm back! I'm back, Chara!", he sobbed. "And I finally have you back." She showed little reaction, but gradually raised her arms to reciprocate the gesture. "Please..." His voice was breaking down completely. Tears were running down his eyes again. "...please promise me! No more plans! No more erasing anything! None of your doom and gloom! I just came back and I just got you back! I can't lose you again."

Eventually, she did show a sign of emotions of her own. Her body trembled. "I..."

He shouted, with no intention of letting her go. "Promise! Promise it to me! You will come back home with me! And you won't do what you did again. No matter how bad you think things can get, we will get through it, and we will get through it together. As a family. Okay?" She didn't have any words. "Say something!"

"Yes...I will tell you everything. And we will find a way to get through it together. Or die trying."

His grip tightened around here. "That's all I wanted to hear, Chara! Now please, come back with us! There's nothing to be afraid of! Mom and Dad don't know anything about what you did!"

"Yes...I hope I can look them in the eyes."

"Now come on, they've got to be worried about Frisk by now. I can't wait for them to see the two of us." With one arm still around Chara's shoulder, Asriel turned around and made his way back to the portal.

Chara couldn't help but ask along the way. "You really think we can beat them? The whole system?"

Wingdings, who hadn't even made it to the house by the time they already came back, ruffled the girl's hair. "Last time you met those two, you were an omnipotent being, capable of destroying the entire universe. And you were still beaten by two children. I think all Monsters of Shoneon Village with a little help can beat a few spoiled Elves and deranged Boss Monsters."

"Boss Monsters?"

"Woops, seems you didn't know. There is a lot to tell you. But that is for another time. For now, you should focus on what is ahead. Show our king and queen that they don't have to accept your loss after all. Show them, that miracles do exist in this world."

"Do you think Dad will accept me?", Asriel couldn't help but ask. "Knowing I was the Angel?"

With his hands behind his back, Wayne slightly bent forward to lower himself a little down to Asriel's level. "I think he will be happy knowing that. Asgrim was as sensitive and innocent as you are as a little boy." He gave Asriel a brief poke to the nuzzle. "Asgore simply never witnessed that side of him. But with you, he did. And now, he has a chance to do it again. I'm pretty certain that is all he could ask for."

"Why don't you just go back and bring his father back too?", Frisk added. Frisk knew about Wayne's time machine. As did Asriel of course.

"Paradoxes. Asgore witnessed Asgrim's death. To undo it would remove a key element in his and our current timeline and thus erase it completely. And in such a new timeline where his father never died, what reason would there be to make the very trip through time I had already made in the first place? There's a rule to time travel. Don't undo your own personal timeline. Never undo the events and experiences that make up who you are. It causes nothing but trouble."

"That makes sense, I guess."

Asriel reveled in every step he took. To all three of the children, it all seemed so surreal. None of them could really fathom they had ever come this far. When they had all come back into the tent through the portal in the middle of an open meadow, the portal closed itself behind them. When they finally pulled open the exit and left the tent, as expected, Asgore and Toriel couldn't believe what they were seeing. "It can't be...", Toriel mumbled to herself. Asgore was almost as shocked. He didn't actually believe this was the case, but he had his suspicions. It seemed to obvious looking back. Wayne truly was trying to tell him without outright saying it. It was Asriel. He was a ruler of Monsters, but not a past ruler, a future one. Wayne said he could see why Asriel would remind Asgore of his own father, because given similar knowledge, they would come to the same conclusions. He resembled Asgore's father, because a part of him WAS his father. 'Maybe he was trying to emulate you'. Which other Dreemurr would want to emulate him, but Asriel? And lastly, the last and most obvious thing Wayne had said. When did it ever happen that a Boss Monster could have had determination to persist after their death? Which Boss Monster did that ever apply to? Asriel, after taking Chara's soul. It all fell into place. And yet, he couldn't believe it. Slowly, Toriel walked closer, still in disbelief at who she was seeing. "...Asriel..." The closer they came to the three children, the faster she ran. "Asriel!" She was shrieking at this point. "Come to me, my child!" For the moment, she forewent the human children, ran both arms around Asriel, ripped him off of Chara and lifted him into a close embrace in one single swing.

"Mom! Mom, you're crushing me!"

"How...how...I don't care! What matters is you're here! I will never let you go again!"

"I love you, Mom."

"I never stopped loving you!" She was more drenched in tears than her son was upon reuniting with Chara. "I believed I lost you! I'm...I'm so, so sorry! I'm just happy you're here!"

The only one strong enough to wrest him from his mother's arms, was his father. Once he had Asriel in his arms, he whispered in his ear. "It was you! It was always you! I'm sorry for judging you like this! I made mistakes as well."

With Chara in Toriel's arms, Frisk stood back and looked upon it all with contentment. The Dreemurrs weren't just back together. Now, they were whole again. Ever since he found out about Asriel, this was all he could ask for. Chara was calm and collected as ever, but Asriel was so happy, he couldn't help but jump almost half the way back home. But given the circumstances, there was no amount of this that could spoil the evening for the mother that held his hand. Asgore wouldn't let go of him either. He had his answer in the end. He now knew who the Angel had been. Knowing this, he was confident that any questions he might have had left about how all this happened, sooner or later, eventually, Asriel would answer them all.

As soon as they were at home, the Dreemurrs planned on enjoying every day together to the fullest. Every day they either went to the movies together, visited some fair, found something else in the city to try visiting, whether it was some peculiar store, Mettaton's theatre, or just arranged a long, comfortable afternoon at home, watching some movie the entire family could watch together. They didn't even visit or spend any time with their friends. Every day was dedicated to some family activity, and every chance they got, the fluffy Monsters kept physical contact to reassure themselves that they weren't dreaming. For the two human children, it was the most exciting, but also exhausting summer holiday they could think of. Sure, it was tiring at times, but the Dreemurrs were finally truly happy. That was the only thing that mattered.


End file.
